Hi - I’m Frances.

I created this space to express my reflections on how making things for myself, and choosing carefully are crucial to a life well led.

The skills to make my own, and choose from the many, are skills that need practice.

For perhaps the first time in human history we live in an age of unadulterated abundance - choice, information, careers, opportunity, possessions, advice, communication, food…….we can overindulge in all these areas, and yet not feel satiated. We are outright encouraged to consume voraciously. We can’t have it all, and trying to do so is making us unhappy, unhealthy and unsettled, eternally convinced that the next ‘new’ thing around the corner is the missing piece to our lives.

It can feel, to me, like it’s hard to hear my own instincts over the din, and harder still to select from a hugely enticing array and not feel like I might be missing out not choosing some another thing. I don’t believe ‘more’ to be universally beneficial, so I started to question: “how to choose?”

In response this, I fostered an interest in ideas like zero-waste, decluttering, minimalism and reducing distraction, all of which came down to one key change in the way I think: I already have plenty of knowledge, skills and things I loved - I just need to put them all to better use, and crucially, purify and trim away the extraneous bits that didn’t serve. It became as much about what I didn’t do, as what what I did do. It became about reflecting and developing. It became about the details. It became about making things for myself.

I started to refer to my process as ‘refinement’.

This felt like an apt description; this is about an evolution, not a revolution, removing and clarifying, becoming more nuanced not just ‘more’, being precise and purposeful, elevating and improving.

Through this process, I dress better, travel better, eat better, focus better and am essentially more in tune with the nuanced intricacies of what I want and need to suit my unique circumstances and tastes. I feel better equipped to navigate the age of abundance in which we live and can stand more steady in the maelstrom of constant information and new ideas that I am confronted with every day. I am less prone to constantly feeling like there is another ‘new idea’ out there that is going to revolutionise my wardrobe or my skin or my holidays or my cooking. I honour myself better in the things I do, the things I make and the ways I live.

So why share this individual journey? Well, in the particular can lie the universal and in the process, I realised I had something to say.

Through critical thought and lessons-learnt journaling on the topics I find interesting, I hope to inspire you to start your own refinement project or, if our interests intersect, perhaps try some of my thoughtfully planned constructs.

It is my hope that you find some useful information and inspiration from my experiences and ponderings.

NOTE: All opinions on this site are my own. I have not been paid for any content, nor am I affiliated with any brands, and nothing which I have wrote about has been gifted - anything I include has been purchased by me personally. Similarly, none of the links I have included are monetised so I will not earn any revenue from your following them.