Live Lagom - mid project blog

Four months since our Ikea shopping trip and the time seems to have flown by! The curtains and blinds are all up, for the first winter in four years our heating thermostat has sat at a constant temperature instead of being turned up a degree or two to try and keep the house warm. The only difference between this year and last is the draught-proofing on the back door and the new blinds and curtains. Having a nice cosy home has been lovely and we're hoping not having to turn the heating up will have cut our gas bill a little.

We've made another trip to Ikea recently to buy some more Ladda rechargeable batteries. We underestimated just how many batteries childrens' toys use! The storhögen battery charger is brilliant, it's made it so easy to switch from using non-rechargeable batteries to rechargeable batteries.

We're still loving our oumbärlig 5l pan and stabil inserts. Not just because it has has worked in the way we intended it to work (in that we could cook more things in one pan, so didn't need to use three different hobs) but because we've all been eating at the same time it's also encouraged the children to try foods they normally wouldn't have tried. We intend on purchasing a couple of the other stabil inserts on our next Ikea trip.

The knock on effects of taking part in the Lagom project have been huge. We're working our way around the house sorting out problem areas, the spare room of doom has been emptied and turned into a useable bedroom (complete with Ikea Kallax storage units and the tardis like Drona boxes), the porch has been emptied and is now used for bikes and tools. Thanks to seeing all the garden projects other Lagom participants have shared in the facebook group we've drawn up plans to completely redesign our garden.

Still plenty of room for the children to play, but moving things around will give us space to add three raised beds for growing vegetables. We've already purchased potato growing bags, we planted the seed potatoes a couple of weeks ago and we're hoping to have potatoes to harvest in a few months time.

We're also growing tree seeds thanks to a Woodland Trust project and we have three planters of wildflower seeds growing in the hopes of encouraging bees to our garden.

Our plans have also piqued the interest of friends, one of them has already turned half of her garden into a vegetable plot and plans on adding raised beds to grow other things. Two other friends are in the process of having plans drawn up so they can do the same. It's things we'd all previously talked about, but didn't think was possible in the limited spaced each of us had. Seeing what other people have been able to achieve has been really eye opening.

We're really looking forward to seeing how our garden plans work out and what else we can achieve in the future.