"Promise me that you'll save this jacket"

My uncle told me this at Thanksgiving this year. He was talking about my one year old's jacket. He mentioned it more than once that I should be keeping her old clothes. It certainly causes an internal struggle as I'm on a journey to NOT keep everything.

To keep or not to keep? That is the question...

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Makeup Declutter-Why It's Important to Take Pictures!

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 ...

Pantry Decluttering

I decluttered the pantry before Christmas and am determined to keep it clutter free throughout the year. To save money we only buy what we will eat immediately during the week. We make sure to eat practically everything we have in the house before we go out for groceries again. This leaves our pantry looking bare at times, but it still manages to get full of other clutter. The pantry was mostly cluttered this time around with plastic bags that were accumulating to be recycled. Here is our pantry before the recent decluttering: Our pantry looks pretty messy, but it's not as bad as our first declutter last year. Again, our biggest problem was the plastic bags that had been collecting for recycling. I own reusable grocery bags, but sometimes we buy groceries when we haven't been able to stop home for them. Hence, why we have some plastic bags in our pantry taking up space. We recycled those bags and I got my reusable bags organized and ready to take out. We also had p...

We Own Too Much Stuff

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...

Simplifying My Life

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