
A celebrity has changed my life. And no, it wasn’t Kim Kardashian.
Interviewing the very lovely, very busy, very honest Natalie Bassingthwaighte about the eternal juggle – mixing motherhood and career, ambition and boundaries, she dropped a tip that I took home THAT VERY NIGHT and implemented in my house.
Listen to Natalie sharing her tips, here (post continues after audio):
Nat Bass, as the world likes to call her, is a proper popstar (Here come the drums, here come the drums…), a TV host (X-Factor, and the ever-glorious, now-departed So You Think You Can Dance), an entrepreneur with a kids’ clothing line so cool, so cute, you will never look at polyester Elsa dresses the same way, and an actress (yes, Neighbours, and soon-to-be the mini-series Brock).
She also has two kids under six – Harper, five, and Hendrix, two-and-a-half – and a hands-on approach to parenting. “We don’t even have a cleaner,” she says. “It would be so much easier if we had full-time help. But that’s a big thing financially and I want to go to swimming lessons, I want to go to gymnastics… passing it on to the nanny, that’s not how I want to a mum.”
Nat has also has taken a couple of Amish turns lately, in the interests of keeping her crazy house as calm as she possibly can. And it was one of those that I decided to adopt.
“We decided to get rid of our TV out of our main living area…. We still have a TV in the house, don’t get me wrong,” she says. “I just found that in the morning we were all getting up and were all sluggish and we’d chuck the TV on and potter around but not have any get up and go. So we chucked the TV out and put music on… It has been one of the most amazing things we have done. It has brought this level of fun and laughter and energy. So we put different music on, it could be chill, or classical or pop… They’re just into the day a lot more.”