Simplifying My Life

This time last year, I was planning for every day that I would be on maternity leave. My due date was August 25, so I would only be with my kids for two weeks before I would be gone. I worked tirelessly, uploading lessons to  tes.com , so all the substitute would have to do was hit "play" on the slideshows. I got copies made, planned on speaking with my substitute weekly (which I did), and thought I would also connect with the students somehow if I read their journals and wrote them back, along with their personal narrative essays. I was going to take only two months off so that it would be like I was never absent. I ended up not going back . Prior to all of this, I asked other teachers what they did while on leave. Almost all said that they provided lesson plans and graded EVERYTHING while on leave. I also heard a horrifying story of a teacher mom who was getting phone calls while her baby was in NICU because the substitute couldn't find a binder with copies that...

So I am doing a lot better with getting rid of stuff, but I am staring at my daughter's room, seeing tons of stuffed animals lying around. My 13 year old could not part with them herself, so she gave the ones she didn't want to keep, but didn't want to donate, to her 11 month old sister. Now these little guys are occupying the baby's room, and these are animals she has no attachment to. Am I the only one who has such a hard time giving stuffed animals away? I feel like they are real beings who have feelings. There's this Dumbo my sister gave to my oldest. I haven't talked with my sister in two years. My oldest doesn't want this little guy. You think that would be enough to get rid of it easily. But I look at this guy and think,"I love Dumbo! He's so cute!" I NEED to get stronger and get rid of all of these little guys who are taking over the baby's room, but I need to overcome the obstacle I'm placing in front of myself! I ...

This is a personification example I can use with my students when I return to work in August.  But really, this week sucked. *I got phished by someone pretending to be my bank. *I was bitten over thirty times by a mysterious bug. I thought I had hives because there were so many bites. I went to the urgent care because I inched so much I felt like my body was on fire. The nurse practitioner confirmed that they were bug bites. *Then with my lovely coordination, I spilled my coffee all over my phone. Thankfully, she survived though there is some permanent screen damage in the right hand corner. I'm still paying on this bad boy, so she needs to be used for one more year! When I get a new phone, I'm going to follow Dave Ramsey's advice and pay for it in full upfront instead of adding it to my monthly phone bill. Back to the best week ever-*the highlight was when our Rottweiler shit in his crate, then spread that lovely shit all over the floor when I took him outside...

I've only shared a bank account with my husband for about two months now, so I'm still getting used to his bank. In the past, I've heard him said that sometimes his bank will stop his card from working if they suspect that his account has been misused. He then has to verify that it was him who made the purchase, then they release the hold. This has happened at least five times since we've been together, so when I received an "alert" that I needed to verify my card because of a suspicious purchase, I thought nothing of it. It arrived on my phone through text and had a link. The site had our bank's logo, totally seemed legit. I gave all of my information, yes including my social, and received a message that I was cleared to use my card again. I text my husband that his bank was annoying and told him what happened. He suggested I called the bank to make sure it was them. I thought, it HAS to be them, that site was official. Well, IT WAS NOT FROM THEM. My ...

A year ago, I was pregnant and expecting an August baby. As my coworkers put it, the timing was "terrible." I'm a high school teacher and every other teacher I know would comment on what a terrible due date I had. They would first congratulate me when they saw my big belly, then they would make a face when I told them my due date. One person even told me I should've planned my pregnancy better. I get it, because I too thought that August was a terrible due date for a momma teacher. I remember praying to God to please let me have a summer baby so I could go back to work right away. My district does offer a year off of unpaid maternity, but I thought leave work for that long? I could never! My pregnancy was difficult to begin with. I experienced extreme anxiety and it was terrifying. The year prior, my husband lost two partners and I witnessed a family member have a mental breakdown. I was also finishing up my last semester of graduate school. I stopped taking my re...

So I think I am finally happy with the amount of makeup I own. I did an initial declutter a few months ago, but didn't write about it until recently . Though I threw so much out, I still felt unsatisfied because I knew that I did not utilize all of the makeup I kept. I went through another decluttering session, and this time I was able to let go of the products I couldn't see myself tossing out last time. I think this is because there was a part of me that wanted to hold on to the person I could be, but not fully accepting that is not who I am. So last year (dear God I hope it was last year and not two years ago haha), I received these free lip pencils from Sephora. If you register as a Beauty Insider, you get free gifts for your birthday. This lip pencil duo came in red and a nude color. I'm sure they have more que fancy names, but I'm just going to call it as I see it.  I am not very full of myself, but I have to admit that I look better in nude lip colors...

I've been really interested in simplifying everything we use, including what we use in our surroundings. I've cut down on most things in the laundry room. I purchased some Norwex dryer balls two years ago and stopped using fabric softener. I tried using All Free & Clear, but found it would leave an odd smell to my clothes after. I started using Seventh Generation Dishwasher detergent; I purchased it from Sprouts and it came in a  box and is in loose powder form. It has lasted us quite a long time vs. the Sprouts pods we were using! We are very much all about saving money while using better products for our family, so I thought that if the dishwasher detergent was great deal, then I'd like to try the laundry detergent. I looked up the company and they have a program called Generation Good  that will let you try free samples if you give a review of their product after. So I reached out because I wanted to try them. I'm not getting paid or anything like that, I j...

I'm sure everyone else who is decluttering has already been doing this, but I wish I would have taken before and after pictures of my progress! Sometimes I feel like decluttering is like losing weight; sometimes you can't see your progress and it can become discouraging. I've been decluttering and minimizing for a year now, and some days I feel like my house looks the same. But I know that I have come a long way! I wish I would've taken a photo of our crazy then office with all of the papers that were hoarded in that room. It's now my baby's room and is quite clear. I would love to compare the two though! I was feeling like I could minimize my makeup some more, because it still feels like too much. So I tried to remind myself that I've come a long way. I still had my containers that used to hold my makeup, so I put the two I emptied out next to my makeup bag. I could see that I did clear out a lot of makeup! It's reassuring to see, but I plan on ...

My husband and I started the online course for Financial Peace University at the end of May. We still need to finish the course; we're currently on lesson seven! We have been on one income for a while because I've been on maternity leave. We had about $700 left to pay off of a couch, which is our smallest debt to get rid of. I'm so happy that we finally made some progress! We'll be paying our couch off this week! So in just a little over a month, we were able to find the extra money needed to make larger payments! I wish we would have enrolled in this course a lot sooner! We struggled with budgeting at first but we're getting the hang of it! We use the website EveryDollar.com, the budgeting website recommended by FPU. It's very helpful because you can see where every dollar goes! It'll tell you how much you've spent and how much money is remaining. It may seem very time consuming to enter what you've paid, but it's probably one of the thing...

I borrowed this book, Life At Home in the Twenty-First Century a few weeks ago after reading about it in an article. It's an ethnography carried out by the Center of Everyday Lives of Families by UCLA. They observed 32 families in California and their findings were very interesting to me. I tried to talk to my husband about it and he questioned if this was a book that was aimed for people to get rid of their stuff. I explained to him that it's a collect of findings of families of today, and if historians were to look back at us now, this is the kind of reports they would make for the way we are living. Here are a few of the things I didn't know about prior and thought they were very intriguing: The majority of houses are child centered, with art and toys filling all spaces of the home Having a child in the home increased home possessions by 30% Parents expressed stress with the mess in their homes as well as not having time to clean Homeowners were unable to use thei...

I have a month left of maternity leave. To say that I'm overwhelmed is an understatement. I've spent the last year decluttering my house. I recently realized that I need to declutter my social media as well. I don't have a Twitter or Instagram. I only recently got a Snap Chat. I joined a decluttering group about a month ago. At first it was very helpful. I was glad to find other people who were on the same journey as I. I noticed a few shared blogs of their journeys. I thought that was a fantastic idea and shared three posts of my own. It was then announced that posting your own blog wouldn't be allowed. I panicked. I felt like I was in trouble, that I did something wrong. I am in a state right now where I am struggling postpartum so what some may have seen as not a big deal, was a big deal to me. I apologized for sharing my blog, trying to explain that my own posts would be too long so that's why I shared it. But I continued to panic, and with fight or flight, I...

I have found that the hardest things for me to declutter are the things my daughters own. I hope talking about it will help make it easier for me to let go. The first item I have had a hard time getting rid of recently is this basket I received at my baby shower for my first born...13 years ago. It came in a set of three and all three were used to hold my oldest child's belongings. Since my oldest has recently become a big fan of decluttering, she didn't have need for the largest basket. I then used it to store the toys of my 10 month, but it began to fall apart. Pieces of it would fall on the floor and my baby would pick them up and put them in her mouth. I would have LOVED to have saved this to store my baby's stuff in like her sister, but it pretty much unsafe for her at this point. I reused the cloth it came with and put it on a laundry basket I purchased from Dollar Tree a few years ago. As my husband took the basket away, I yelled, "Thanks for being so good to ...