It was the perfect storm. A long, busy weekend. Routine and schedule thrown off. It was a Tuesday that felt like a Monday in every sense of the word.

“I can’t find my other shoe.”

Charlotte was getting dressed for Kindergarten, and when it came time for the shoes, she only had one. She is a bit of a “shoe flinger”— she likes to loosen her shoes just enough, kick her leg high and flick her foot, sending her shoes soaring into the air, landing in random, uncertain locations. It was only a matter of time before she would lose a shoe entirely. Today happened to be the day.  

When it is five minutes until it’s time to load up for school, hearing that your child cannot find a piece of her school uniform is one of the top three worst things she could say. “I’m going to puke” and “Remember, you’re chaperoning my field trip today” are numbers 1 and 2, respectively.

We hadn’t yet picked up a second pair of uniform shoes for Charlotte, so these were her only option. I’d like to say that I played it cool… that I was the source of grace and positivity that my five year old needed in that moment…but I was far from that. I was stressed. I was grouchy. I was angry. I was mean.

And when I found my girl standing in front of the mirror in her bedroom, putting on a pair of blue and white striped tennis shoes, smoothing her hair and her skirt with her hands, I immediately felt guilt and shame. I missed a moment to be the mother I wanted to be, and my daughter was forced to pick herself up and move on without my help.

Luke took her to school in the tennis shoes, and the world did not end. I drove to our storage unit, opened the bin of Noelle’s outgrown uniforms, and I found her shoes from Kindergarten. A full size larger than what Charlotte wears, I figured they were better than nothing, and I dropped them off at the school on my way home.

The weight of my shortcomings as a mother this morning felt heavy and suffocating. I began telling myself that a good mother would not have reacted the way that I did, and that a good mother would have let the shoe incident roll off her back.

But I have spent a lot of time and energy bettering my mind this summer, and, thankfully, like muscle memory, my brain put the negative self-talk in its place and stopped it in its tracks.

Rather than continue to rake myself over the coals of motherhood failure for my reaction, I rested in the truth.

Yes.

I rested in the truth.

My brain gets a high off emotion, but it thrives on the truth. It has taken a lot of practice, discipline, and prayer to find this place. But now, instead of allowing one shitty morning to derail my entire day or make me feel unworthy of a second chance, I simply rest.

I rest in the truth that I was created for this. No, not to mess up but to be a mother. I was created for motherhood, and my children were created for me. I may have lots of passions and pursuits and interests and careers throughout my lifetime, but I was created to be a mother to these children. It was not an accident. To quote Rachel Hollis, I cannot fail at something I was created to do.

I rest in the truth that “mom-guilt” is a distraction. It comes from a good place. Really it does. We love our children so much that we feel awful when we don’t get it right. It’s ok to have those feelings, but you have to let them go quickly. If we spend too much time in guilt, we fall victim to the trap Satan has set — that if we fixate on ourselves and our guilt, we can’t be effective at living the abundant life God has promised us. We ignore our blessings, our talents & gifts, and the fullness of God’s love.

I rest in the truth that I am loved. Even when I am ugly. Even when I am tired. Even when I am frustrated. Even when I am not fun to be around. You know how I know this? Because I love my children when they are ugly, tired, frustrated, and not fun to be around. And God loves me like that, because I am His child, too. I am blessed to be loved by my husband, my children, and friends and family, too, but even if I had no one – I would still rest in this truth. 

I rest in the truth that shame cannot survive being spoken. Honestly? That is the very basis of this blog. I write to share my shame. In a string of several sentences, I am able to take this thing, whatever it is that has made me feel less-than, unworthy, and embarrassed, and transform it into a new being — one that can provide support for someone else, one that can find common ground to stand on, one that can heal and encourage change. Once spoken and brought into the light — it is no longer shame.

In these truths, I feel calm. In these truths, I feel free.

Wistful to restful, in these truths.

Mamas, rest.

 

Over the past year, I have been making sincere efforts to improve how I handle the mundane and sometimes overwhelming tasks of running a household. With four small children and a husband who can work long hours at times, I knew that I had to stop letting chores pile up and learn how to handle everything better. My children needed me to set a good example, and they also needed to be able to find clean clothes in the morning. Ha!

Since becoming more diligent about a few aspects of home management, I can say with certainty that our family is much happier. I know I am much more relaxed and able to keep my head above water, and as we all know, if mama ain’t happy, ain’t nobody happy.

I have compiled a list of the most impactful changes I have made to improve our home life. My hope is that if you are feeling overwhelmed, stressed, and behind in everything (like I was), you might find this list useful.

*Some links are affiliate links.

Roomba

You guys, I am not kidding when I say that this little robot vacuum changed my ever-loving life. I was pregnant with Leo when I impulsively ordered it online. I was nesting like a mad woman, and my house could not get clean enough. Everywhere I looked, I saw crumbs, hair, and tiny toys on my floor. I would sweep with a broom, but it wouldn’t get everything. I would run our regular vacuum, and the floor would be dirty again within an hour. I used both wet and dry microfiber mops on our tile and wood laminate floors, and I was never impressed.

On a pregnancy-induced whim, I ordered the Roomba 960. I knew it was a splurge, but I had some gift cards to offset the cost. There are robot vacuums in several brands and across all price points. I chose this one because it connected to an app on my phone which would allow me to schedule routine cleanings and start the vacuum remotely, even when I wasn’t home.

I am telling you, I would marry my Roomba (if it were legal and not weird). We have owned it for almost a year and a half, and I have no complaints. It has always worked extremely well. No issues at all. I buy the filters on Amazon (an off-brand), and there is very little maintenance involved.

What I have loved about it the most is that we keep our floors picked up because I run the Roomba twice a day. My kids know that Roomba will eat their tiny toys, so they are better about picking up after themselves. Roomba eats up all the crumbs, hairs, small scraps of paper, random Cheerios…everything. Occasionally, Roomba will eat some small Legos or Barbie shoes or ponytail holders, but I absolutely love that I can easily open the bin and get those items out. Those types of items don’t destroy the Roomba like they might a standard vacuum.

I feel like if your floors are clean, your whole house just feels clean. It is a great way to maintain a baseline level of cleanliness without having to actually do anything. While the Roomba is running, you can be working on another chore, reading to your children, or not even be in the house. I love multi-tasking.

We use the virtual wall barriers (Roomba comes with one and we purchased an extra) to keep Roomba from going down the stairs at our new house or into rooms we don’t need it to clean. Roomba goes from our hardwood floors, over rugs, and onto carpet with no issue. After the first couple of runs, it learns your house floor plan and runs in an organized pattern so that it doesn’t miss any spots. If the battery gets low, it goes back to the docking station, charges, and then returns to where it left off to finish the cleaning job.

There’s nothing I don’t love about this little robot. In fact, I love it so much that we have a second one (slightly different model) for our downstairs, and we have a robot mop!

Sam’s Club

Yes, I know, everyone loves Costco, but don’t sleep on Sam’s Club! The closest Costco and Sam’s Club is an hour away from us, and I have never actually been inside either store. However, I purchased a Sam’s Club membership online for $45 for the year (Costco’s start at $60). I use that membership to purchase items that we go through quickly in our house such as diapers, wipes, dishwasher and laundry soap, trash bags, paper plates, and batteries. These items are then delivered to my house, much of the time with free or very inexpensive shipping.

It used to be that we would run out of one of those items every single week. The local box stores didn’t sell quantities large enough to keep us from having to restock so frequently. It became 1) annoying to constantly have to buy necessities each week and 2) an easy excuse to go shopping – which meant that “Going to buy trash bags” quickly turned into “Going to buy trash bags and a new coffee mug and a cute outfit for each child and a pair of shoes marked 30% off and some new under eye concealer and also a rug for our living room.”

We needed to eliminate the need to go to the store so much, so that’s where Sam’s Club comes into the picture. I love that I can buy our favorite household items in large quantities for great prices. We never run out of laundry detergent or batteries now, and I believe we are saving money — not only on the cost of the items themselves but also on all the “extras” we aren’t purchasing by not shopping as often.

Click-List

Our town was a little late to the grocery delivery/order-ahead game, but we finally have a couple of options if going to the grocery store is a giant pain in your butt. There are many reasons why I despise the task, and I am sure I don’t need to list them because I feel like grocery shopping is a universal “ugh” chore. I am sure there are some people who really enjoy it, but if they exist, I haven’t met any of them yet.

One of our major supermarkets provides grocery delivery to your door via Shipt, a 3rd party service. Unfortunately, Shipt does not deliver to my house, so I rely on Click-List. Click-List is a service that one of our other grocery stores provides. You can order your items online or via the app, and then you select a time to come and pick up the items at the store. The bags are carried out and placed in your vehicle for you. You don’t have to get out of the car!

I love this option because it is inexpensive — only $4.95 each time you use it (the first 3 orders are free), extremely convenient, and a great excuse to throw your kids in the car for an afternoon drive when they are beating down the gates of Crazy Town. I like to play a podcast (the sound of adults talking in a podcast instantly calms my children down), grab a coffee from Starbucks, and enjoy the outing — ending it with picking up my groceries without leaving my vehicle.

You can leave notes regarding produce, instructing the shoppers about what you prefer in your fruit or vegetables (green bananas, please!). You can also select “no substitutions,” which means that if an item is out of stock, the shoppers will not replace it with a “similar” item. I now choose this option after the shoppers made some substitutions I didn’t care for. It’s not their fault… they do their best. I just would rather not receive an item than risk a substitution I don’t love. Out of stock items don’t happen frequently, but when something is not available, I can usually grab it at Target (or elsewhere, but who am I kidding?). You are not charged for out of stock items.

The Click-List shoppers are always super careful when loading my purchases into my vehicle. They always give me the eggs and bread to keep up in the front with me. I have never had any issues with not getting items that I paid for. I can’t say enough good things about this service!

We have been using Click-List for a couple months now, and, as a result, we have been so much better about using nearly all of our groceries before they expire. We are buying only what we actually want to consume instead of making impulse buys at the store. When I would make grocery runs in person, I tried to stock up for a couple of weeks so that I wouldn’t have to return so quickly, but I found that we weren’t using the food quick enough — which meant lots of waste and rotten produce. That issue is almost non-existent now.

When I am meal planning, I will add items to my shopping cart while I am browsing the recipes so that I know I have everything I need. It makes life so much easier when I know that our meals are planned and our groceries have been purchased for the week, yet all I had to do was add items to a shopping cart and show up to the store at the right time.

I know not every city has this type of service, but if you do, please give it a try!

A Load of Laundry A Day…

…keeps the Laundry Mountain At Bay. Laundry has always been one of my most hated household responsibilities. With four children and a husband (who wears 3 outfits in a day), I was drowning in laundry up until a few weeks ago. It was nothing to find me buried under piles of clean laundry that needed folded and put away. Our children would just dig their clothes out of the Laundry Mountain in my bedroom. I reasoned that there were more pressing tasks  to accomplish and the laundry could wait. Washing it wasn’t the problem, but getting it turned around and put in its place was the challenge.

At the beginning of this school year, I decided that I was not going to let the laundry get backed up again. I didn’t want to spend hours of my day folding laundry, so I knew I needed to make some changes.

I took a page from Allie Casazza’s playbook and vowed to do one load of laundry every single day. That means one load each day would be washed, dried, folded, and put away. This would mean that the amount of clothes to fold and put away would likely be pretty small and would only require a few minutes of my day.

I knew that in order for this to become a habit, I needed to work into some “anchors” in my day. Let’s be honest, most of our day revolves around our meals. So, I have been very diligent about working my laundry routine around our meal schedule. At breakfast, I go around to all the bedrooms and gather the dirty clothes from the previous day. It usually is only a few articles of clothing per person. I put the dirty clothes in the washer and get the load started.

At lunch, I move the wet, clean clothes from the washer to the dryer.

While I am prepping dinner, I get all the dried clothes into a laundry basket and take it to my bedroom to be folded. Typically, while dinner is cooking and my kids are playing, I will fold the clothes and sort them into piles on my floor. Each child gets their own row of clothes. For example, Noelle’s clothes are sorted into her tops, bottoms, and PJs in a line on my floor. This allows her to easily pick up her piles of clothes and place them in the right drawers. She is 8, so she is more than capable of knowing what goes where, but I do this system for my 5 and 3 year old as well, which allows them both to put their clothes away in the correct drawers.

I continue to sort the rest of the clothes into individual piles. Luke’s t-shirts. Luke’s gym shorts. My yoga pants. My t-shirts. Let’s be honest, that’s the extent of the clothes I wear. Clothes that need hung up are taken care of right away.

I make it a goal that the kids put their clothes away before bedtime, and then Luke and I finish up putting away our clothes before relaxing for the night.

Even though the task takes an entire day to complete, it is all done in small 5-10 minute chunks of time. By working the routine around our meal schedule, it has become habitual. I love going to bed knowing that the laundry is caught up, but I also love that I didn’t have to waste 4-5 hours of my day to get me there.

If laundry is plaguing you, consider trying the “one load a day” method. You may never have to scale a Laundry Mountain again!

Make the Bed

My last change is probably the smallest one, yet it has made such a big difference. I make our bed first thing in the morning. I used to not make my bed, ever. I didn’t understand the point. You were just going to get back into it anyway, right? However, seeing a tidy bed just creates such an inviting, calming space in your bedroom. The day can be stressful. Who wants to relax in a chaotic, messy room? I have found that my spending 30 seconds making my bed each day, the rest of my room stays much cleaner and I feel a sense of peace when I step into my space — whereas before, the master bedroom door was closed at all times during the day for fear of anyone seeing what chaos was behind the door. I, myself, didn’t even want to see it.

 

Please do not think that I am implying that I “have it all together.” I positively, certainly, do not. There are mornings when I think that the next knock on the door will be 1) the police, investigating suspicious screaming or 2) the circus on a recruiting trip — but I WILL say that the above steps have made life a lot easier and me an (almost) stress-less mama (almost).

 

By now, many of you may be chin deep in the madness of a new school year. You may be a first time Back-to-Schooler, or you may have two or three (or more) starting their classes. You may be homeschooling, preschooling, or full-time schooling K-12. There are so many ways to educate children these days, but the one constant truth, no matter what, is that this is a time of transition that can feel overwhelming and chaotic.

To quote one of my favorite movies, “Take a look around, Helen! We’re at the threshold of Hell!” – Clark Griswold, Christmas Vacation

My oldest children have just started third grade, kindergarten, and preschool. I am past the first-time school mom stage, and, while we still have quite a bit of chaos in our house this time of year, we also have learned a couple sanity-saving tricks that are helping the process to go smoothly so far. I’m a firm believer that if you know something, you should share it in case it can help someone else. So, if you find yourself in a bit of a B2S Tornado, check out what we do to keep our mornings a little calmer, our post-school afternoons more productive, and our evenings somewhat peaceful (if that is even possible in this house).

The Homework Spot

When we designed our house, we intentionally built a space for a “homework spot.” We knew it was important to have a place for our children to sit and do their work without tons of distractions. We also knew it was important for them to have their supplies close by without having to get up 13 times to find the crayons, glue, scissors, ruler, tape, pencil sharpener, etc. As a former teacher, I know that children love to find any excuse to get up and “go get something.” It allows them to delay the inevitable and potentially get wrapped up in a TV show or find themselves in the pantry (I thought you needed a pencil, not a handful of chips). Limiting the amount of times they have to get up to retrieve something helps to streamline the homework process. I also knew that if the space was inviting, clear of clutter, and attractive, they would enjoy using it.

We have a dedicated desk for this purpose so that we don’t have to work around homework at the dinner table. If I am wanting to get the table set, my child can still be at the homework desk. This also eliminates the amount of pizza grease spots that end up on the worksheets (we’ve all been there)!

Desk & Hanging Storage: IKEA | Paper Trays, Lamp, Tape Dispenser, Letter Board, Cork Boards, Ottoman: Target | Cactus: TJ Maxx | Jar: Joann’s | Pencil Sharpener: Amazon

I purchased these hanging organizers from IKEA to hold frequently-used supplies, and inside the drawers of the desk are notebooks and other items such as pencils, a ruler, and other items they may need. Inside the ottoman are learning activities for extra practice such as magnet letters, wipe off boards, Brain Quest card wheels, and games. We love the cork boards for a way to display their drawings, notes, and newsletters. A lamp and electric pencil sharpener sit on the desk to aid in productivity. Each child has her own tray for the papers they bring home, and the top tray is for general school information that doesn’t pertain to any specific child (calendars, lunch menus, order forms, etc). I like that these trays are small, which will limit the amount of papers that can be collected there. When the tray is full, I will go through it and pitch what isn’t important or photograph what I want to preserve (check out this post for how I handle all the artwork and keepsakes).

Inside the jar are affirmations that I purchased on Teachers Pay Teachers. I use these for writing practice as well as confidence building. They are great talking points and ways to continually build them up.

I fully realize that not everyone has a dedicated space in their house for homework. In our old house, we put a very cheap desk from Target in the corner of our dining room and had a similar setup. We used plastic Rubbermaid drawer units for the art supplies and school papers. It still created a great spot for the kids to get their work done in peace.

If you don’t have room to set up an extra desk for homework, you could get a small crate or basket and make sure all the tools your child may need for homework (crayons, pencils, scissors, tape, pencil sharpener, extra paper, flash cards, etc) are inside. You could hide the crate when not in use, but when your child needs to get work done, he or she can grab it and be ready.

We have agreed that on days when both Noelle, who is in third grade, and Charlotte, who is in Kindergarten, have homework, Charlotte will get the homework spot first. She will need more help from me, and her work may take a little longer. Since Noelle is so independent, she can wait a little longer before starting her work because it likely won’t take her much time to finish. Her teacher assigns 20 minutes of free reading per night, so she could do that reading on her bed while I am working with Charlotte.

Lunch Menu + Prep

When Noelle was in Kindergarten, I wrote a post about how we prepared her lunches ahead of time. It was such a great method that helped us so much! But then, for some reason, we didn’t prep her lunches that way in first or second grade (I blame adding Leo to our family and all the “surviving” that was happening). I can tell you right now from doing it both ways, we absolutely were 147% more stressed when we didn’t prep all the lunches for the week. Even when we packed the lunch the night before, Luke and I would rock-paper-scissors for who had to do it. It was just something about adding another task to the end of the night when the kitchen was already cleaned up and we were ready to go to bed that made us so grouchy. On nights that we would say, “Let’s just save it for the morning,” we would inevitably oversleep the next day or just be rushing more in general, which meant that we either slammed a messy PBJ in a baggie or threw in some cold pizza or forgot to make the lunch completely and would have to bring food to the school before 11 a.m. (our school does not have a traditional hot lunch program where the students can opt to buy a lunch if they forget — you have to preorder your lunches for the month, so if you forget to send a lunch, you need to bring it to the school).

I hated feeling so rushed and grumpy in the mornings, so I decided that this year would be different. With three kiddos taking their lunches to school, I knew that we would have to be more organized and prepared. I began by creating a lunch menu of my own. There were two choices for each category (main item, fruit, vegetable). The same items are offered each day of the week, so they are encouraged to change it up from each day so that they don’t eat the same thing everyday. However, if they want the same thing everyday, it doesn’t bother me. Noelle, who can read, makes her choices first, and then she helps the younger two with their choices. She adds up all the selections and lets me know how many bags of grapes to prepare or grilled cheese sandwiches to make, and then I get to work preparing all of the lunch items for the entire week. This past Sunday, it took about an hour to get it all prepped, bagged, and organized, but I think that is a small price to pay for a week’s worth of sanity.

I try to make it easy on myself by giving them choices of food we already have from our weekly grocery run (and by run, I mean when I order it online and wait in my van with my Starbucks until the ClickList Angel brings it out). I am not trying to reinvent the wheel. Grilled cheese sandwiches and quesadillas that can be warmed up (our cafeteria has microwaves that can be used by lunchroom helpers), peanut butter and jelly roll-ups (seem to get less mushy than a sandwich, don’t ask me how), cheese and crackers with salami or pepperoni, hard boiled eggs, grapes, blueberries, Halo oranges, carrots with ranch or hummus cups, and premade salads in small food storage containers (my kids love salad…not sure how that happened) are our go-tos. I am sure I will find new things to try. Dessert is always mama’s choice (which means whatever I find stashed in “my section” of the pantry – Annie’s bunnies, Nilla wafers, or homemade chocolate chip cookies if I am feeling fancy).

I use these condiment cups with lids for the ranch dressing and hummus and lots of snack sized plastic baggies. I know that is not the best for the environment, but it’s a trade-off for now. Plastic waste is bad, but so are my crazy-mama mood swings when I feel overwhelmed by too many tasks. We have a drawer in our fridge that is perfect for keeping all of the prepped baggies.

It now takes us 10 seconds to pack 3 lunches in the morning, and with the menu on the fridge, Noelle can see what each child wanted on the given day and helps assemble the lunch boxes for us if we are in a hurry.

Pssst: I prep lunches for Shiloh even on the two days per week she is home with me so that I don’t have to worry about making lunch on those days either. This reduces the temptation to get fast food and also minimizes clean up.

Bedtime Story Sticks

This tip isn’t specific to B2S, but this is definitely helping with our bedtime routine, which is a very important part of that transition from summertime to school time.

We have always loved to read with our kids before bed. We start this habit when they are babies, and they have come to crave it. We rarely miss a night of reading to them. However, with three girls who now want to pick stories, this can really extend bedtime and create a lot of fighting over who gets to go first and who picks what book. Luke and I are like most other parents – we like bedtime to be quick and easy. We are tired, our patience is thin, and we are ready to unwind without kids for a little while.

So, after weeks of continuous fighting about whose book will be read at bedtime, I found a bunch of wide popsicle sticks and wrote each girl’s name on a stick, and I also wrote Mama on a stick and Papa on a stick. I put all the sticks in a mug, and now we draw a stick at bedtime to see who gets to pick the story. Once a stick is drawn, it doesn’t go back into the mug until all of the sticks have been drawn. This makes sure each child will get her turn eventually (and mama and papa get to pick, too). Shiloh, who is three, is having a harder time accepting when it isn’t her name that is picked, but that is also a skill she needs to learn — she won’t always get her way because she is cute or the youngest girl. Just last night, when her name wasn’t picked, she cried, and our older two tried to trade with her so that she would get her turn, but we discouraged that (thanking them for their kindness anyway), because we want Shiloh to learn that her turn is coming. This is a skill that can also be learned by playing board or card games with your children (but we don’t do a ton of that right now…).

If you have multiple children who are arguing over who gets to have their book read (and you don’t want to have to read 3-4 bedtime stories when you’re already tired and just wanting to get to that Bachelor in Paradise episode from last night), or if you have children who don’t really love reading before bed, maybe doing this little “game” with the popsicle sticks will add an element of surprise and excitement to the routine.

If you have one child, you could write a color name on each stick and challenge your child to find a book with that color on the cover, and that’s the book you read. This may keep you from having to read the same book every night, or it may inspire your child who doesn’t love books all that much. You could do the same with letters. “Find a book that starts with the letter B.”

The teacher in me can’t stress enough the importance of reading to your children, especially at a very young age. It is truly the most important “homework” your children have.

Let me know if you give one of these tricks a try! And if all else fails, there’s wine. Did I say wine? I meant coffee (and wine).

 

*Some links are affiliate links.

 

My husband was out of town last week, and in an attempt to save my sanity, I let my kids make a list of everything they wanted to do during that time while he was gone. Each girl got to name a restaurant where they wanted to eat, a place they wanted to visit, and an activity they wanted to do. They unanimously said they wanted to go get their school supplies as one of their choices. So, despite the fact that taking all of my children to Target alone is one of my least favorite activities, I loaded them up and off we went.

 

Equipped with their lists on my phone, we weaved through the aisles and pulled the corresponding pencils, notebooks, markers, crayons, colored pencils, scissors, sanitizer wipes, and baggies. We bought the folders with pockets and prongs, the glue sticks, and the note cards. The art boxes, the tissues, and the extra large pink erasers.

 

Our cart was comically full, between the baby in the front seat, the 3 year old in the basket with school supplies piled all around her, and my older two girls hanging on either side of the cart. We received warm smiles and heartfelt chuckles from other customers in the store. The joy and excitement of my children with all of their new belongings had its own gravity. I mean, who doesn’t love a crisp, pointy crayon?

 

I found myself in the euphoria of checking one more thing off the list, having already purchased their backpacks, lunch boxes, uniforms, and shoes, and I thought to myself, “Alright. They are ready to go back to school now. They have everything they need.”

 

But later that night, once the kids were all in bed and I was alone in a quiet house, I was confronted with feelings of anxiety, restlessness, and uncertainty as we prepare to start another year of school. The “what-ifs” and the “I-hopes” took over. I came to the realization that my children actually needed so much more than what was on that School Supplies List. So I began to brainstorm a new list.

 

What do my children really need for this school year?

 

Variety pack of Respect, Resourcefulness, & Resilience

You will need all three of these throughout the year — heck, throughout the day. Respect for your teachers and your peers. Respect also for yourself. There’s a respectful way to disagree with someone else. There’s a respectful way to stand up for yourself. There’s a respectful way to win and a respectful way to lose. Some human beings will hardly seem worthy at times, but we are called to love and respect one another…to treat others as we would like to be treated. Respect.

 

You will need to be resourceful. You will need to know the answers to questions, and you will need learn where to find those answers. If you can’t find what you’re looking for at first pass, try again. Keep looking. Keep asking. Don’t give up. Things won’t go as planned. Projects will fall apart. You’ll lose things. You’ll break things. Be resourceful and keep going.

 

Resilience. The simple art of getting knocked down, but standing right back up. Whether it’s just a mental struggle or you literally trip and fall on the playground, be resilient. Get up. Someone may hurt your feelings, and as much as I want to keep that from happening, I know that I can’t. We can’t control what anyone says or does to us, but we 100% can control how we handle it. And in this family, we get back up.

 

1 ream of Patience

Have patience with yourself. You may not get things right away. Your name may not be called first for a special classroom privilege, and you may have to wait a while before you are recognized for a job well done. Patience. Your time is coming. You may not be that great yet at what you’re trying to do, but you’ll get there.

 

And have patience with others– with your teachers, with your friends, and with your mama. Especially your mama. I will forget to sign more than a few papers. I won’t always remember that next Thursday you’re supposed to wear green (which means that next Wednesday, I need to wash all the green– but first I have to find it). It will take a little while for me to get back into the swing of things, too. Patience. And reminders.

 

1 box of Thinking Outside the Box

I dare you to think differently. Come up with new ideas and listen to other points of view. Don’t be afraid to take an unconventional approach. Be a little weird. It’s OK.

 

1 set of Slow to Anger, Quick to Love

You will be challenged multiple times a week, perhaps even multiple times a day, by people who you don’t agree with, who may hurt your feelings, who may play with someone else, who may break something of yours that you really loved — and you will want to feel angry, hurt, disappointed, or left out. Those are all very real feelings, but I encourage you, when you start to feel overwhelmed and consumed by anger and frustration, when you feel like the water is about to boil over…take a deep breath and turn down the heat. Go for a walk. Take a time out. Breathe deeply. And reflect. Try to think like the other person. Is there a reason for his or her actions? Is there something you could have misunderstood? Is the other person just having a crummy day and felt like spilling that misery onto you? Do your best to meet the people who hurt you where they are. And if you’re brave enough, I dare you to show them love.

 

24 pack of Inclusion

Playground games. Seats in the cafeteria. Birthday parties. It’s OK if you and a group of friends are playing together. You don’t have to go around and insist everyone to join you in the name of inclusion. However, if you see someone who is alone, who has no one to talk to, nowhere to sit, no one to play with, you must make an effort to include him or her. Start a conversation, do a big ol’ “come over here” gesture, pat the open seat beside you and offer a warm smile — it doesn’t matter how you do it, just make sure you are an includer. The person may resist at first. The person may want alone time and that is their choice, but you keep inviting anyway. Every day. Every time. The potential rejection you may experience from someone not accepting your inclusion PALES SIGNIFICANTLY to the potential devastation the other person may be feeling if you never make the effort. Take the risk. Fight the feeling in your belly that makes it feel awkward and the voice in your head that says, “I’m sure she is fine over there by herself,” or “She wasn’t that nice to me today so I’m not going to talk to her.” Include, always, anyway.

 

1 container of Confidence (large size)

You were gifted by God to be the exact person you are right now. You aren’t finished. You aren’t done. You are a work in progress. You are evolving everyday. You are growing, learning, and changing in both mental and physical ways. You are not perfect, but no one is. Be confident. It’s easier said than done. I know this to be true. I battle with my mind everyday, but I am working on it and determined to be better for you. Believing that you are anything other than an extraordinary miracle from God is just a lie that you don’t have the time to listen to. You have things to do. You have stuff to learn. You have stories to tell. You have a life to live, and no one can do that like you. There will be other girls with pretty hair, but here’s the good news – more than one girl can have pretty hair. No one has to have the prettiest hair. There will be other girls with cute clothes, but here’s the best part – more than one girl can have cute clothes. No one has to have the cutest clothes. There will be other girls who are smart, but…you guessed it! More than one girl can be smart. No one has to be the smartest. There will be other girls who are funny, but…say it with me now…more than one girl can be funny. No one has to be the funniest. Here’s the one exception – you ARE the YOUEST. STAND in your skin, in your light, in your personality — that’s a whole lot to be confident about.

You may remember that I went on a mission to streamline and declutter my life and home prior to our big move, all thanks to Allie Casazza. I slowly and steadily went through many areas of our home and attacked the issue of clutter, disorganization, and, well…too much crap. As we prepared to move into our new home, I knew that we did NOT want to just box up all of our overflowing possessions and stuff them into our new space. We needed to learn how to let go of items we did not need and streamline our “collections” down to what we absolutely loved. It has been a learning experience for the entire family.

 

Our children were on board from the beginning. It makes sense, too. Children are genetically little versions of their parents. They have our DNA. They live with us. They watch us. They listen to us. They pick up on what stresses us out and also on what makes us happy. They are so intuitive. So it stands to reason that if you are a person who is deeply bothered and affected by excess clutter and items lying around, then your children probably are bothered by it, too. They may not be able to verbalize that, and they may even act like it is completely fine to keep living the way that they are, but that’s because they don’t really know better. When you know better, you do better, and that is our job as parents to pass on what we have learned to our children.

 

So, I knew that I was not going to be able to make this change in our family without our children’s blessings. As a result, they became a part of the streamlining of our toys. They had a say in what stayed and what went. They were very excited at the idea of passing their toys onto other children who would enjoy them, and they have truly loved playing with the toys they really love. I haven’t heard them say they missed one single toy that we purged. They still have plenty to play with and are not deprived whatsoever.

 

The toy problem was a great hurdle to clear, but there was one other huge obstacle pertaining to our kids’ clutter that we needed to address.

 

The artwork.

 

If your children are in any kind of school, daycare, or educational program, they are going to create hundreds, if not thousands, of crafts, gifts, and masterpieces throughout the years. They will proudly present them to you and expect that you keep them until you die.

 

And you will want to (mostly…), but if you have more than one child, you will quickly realize that there are not enough totes and storage containers in all the Targets of the world to house all of those artifacts. And even if you buy all of the bins and totes, you still have to find a place to put all of the bins and totes. And make sure you store them in a place that won’t be exposed to water or extreme temperatures or else your precious pieces will be ruined in a matter of time.

 

I was doing the tote method for a while. Each child had a tote that would fit under our bed, and when it was full, we would have to go through it and discard the pieces we didn’t want to keep anymore to make room for the new. This was a decent idea except for the fact that remembering to store the artwork each time something new was brought home (which for us, with three children in school, became almost a daily occurrence) became impossible. I started just stacking papers up on a small counter in our kitchen until I had the time to sort and store them, but soon that became a huge eyesore in our house and just another thing I had to “get to.”

 

In my newfound motivation to declutter and purge, I decided to tackle the kids’ artwork once and for all. I pulled out all of the totes, which somehow had expanded to not just one tote for each child but 2-3 per child, and they were stored under our bed as well as our daughters’ bunk beds. I spent many afternoon nap times going through all of the well-loved pieces and thinking about how I was going to do this.

 

Here are few thoughts that came to mind as I was planning my strategy:

 

1. Wow! Our kids have made some adorable creations! Some of these are actually really cute and pretty. I wish I could see these more often than just when I want to clean out these bins.
2. Darn. Even though these have been in airtight bins inside our home (and not an attic or garage), the paper has started to fade and curl. Glued-on items aren’t staying on, and they are really starting to age…even though at the most they are only 8 years old. What will they look like in 40 years? And why did I keep anything with marshmallows or cereal glued on it? Gross.
3. How in the world are we going to continue to store these works of art for our children when we have four children? We will have a major storage scarcity issue in just a year or two.

 

After all of that thinking, I came up with a plan that would fix all of the above-listed problems. And yes, it involves throwing stuff away.

 

GASP. I KNOW.

 

It was painful to accept, but I needed to part with some (a lot) of these things. However, I felt really good about my plan of attack, and I am here to share it if you struggle with the same issues.

 

All you need are a phone with a good camera (I have an iPhone), the Dropbox app, and the Chatbooks app.

 

My process went as follows:

 

1. Start with one child at a time. I chose my oldest daughter because she had the most to sort through.

2. I sorted all of her artwork into piles.

• One pile for items that probably should never have been saved. If they don’t mean anything to me now, they won’t mean anything to me 10-20-30 years down the line.
• One pile for each grade level, including her daycare and preschool years.

3. I went to my Dropbox account and paid for 1TB of storage (1,000 GB) so that I could upload as many photos as I wanted. It is under $10/month.

4. I made Dropbox folders for each of my children and then made subfolders for each of them for each grade level.

 

 

5. I used a large, white tote lid as a background, and I went to a place in my house where we had good natural light, and I started with her daycare/preschool pile and took an individual photo of each and every item that I loved. I tried to let the artwork take up as much space as possible in the lens of my camera so that I wouldn’t have a ton of cropping & straightening to do after the fact.

6. I created an album on my phone for Noelle’s work and added all of those photos to that album.

7. Before I moved onto the next grade level, I uploaded the images that I just took to the Dropbox app into the appropriate folder.

 

8. I then went to the Chatbooks app and created a custom photo book for these images. I will make a book for each child’s work, split up into 1-2 grade levels at a time. I love Chatbooks because they are small (either 6” or 8” square books), modern, high quality, and perfect for sitting on a bookshelf as they don’t take up much space.

 

9. Once I completed the process, I moved on to the next grade level. Eventually, when I finished all of Noelle’s, I started on Charlotte’s work and repeated the whole process over again.

10. Along the way, I pulled out any item that had a handprint on it. As long as I it was flat and didn’t have something glued to it, I ran it through my letter-size laminator to preserve it. I decided to keep any of these items.

• Notes to Mama, little “I love yous,” and sweetness like that went into my own personal box in my closet. I love to keep things like that.

11. I also pulled out any artwork that was extra special or cool enough to be framed and displayed in our house. I couldn’t believe how many amazing pieces my children had created that were not doing anything except aging in a tote. These needed to be displayed! I set them aside and began collecting frames for them.

 

12. Once I was certain that I photographed and uploaded everything from an entire grade level, I pulled the trigger on ordering the Chatbooks. So far, I have purchased Noelle’s daycare and preschool books as well as her Kindergarten/1st grade book (I combined those two grades) and 2nd grade book. I also just ordered Charlotte’s preschool book since she will soon be entering Kindergarten. The Chatbooks can hold hundreds of photos, but I thought it would be better to stick with 100-150 photos per book so that we could limit the time-frame of each book.

13. I waited until I received the first Chatbooks before tossing the original artwork. I wanted to make sure I was happy with the finished product and the quality of the book. I had already been using Chatbooks for my Instagram photos, and I knew I loved it for that, but I didn’t know how I would feel about these sentimental pieces. My husband and I both agreed that we LOVED the book of artwork and knew this was the way to go for us.

 

 

14. TOSS THE ART WORK. Yep. In the trash. It’s probably best that the kids don’t see you do that.

 

I have now streamlined what was once 8 totes of children’s artwork, school work, certificates, and cards into one small tote of super special things for each child, and a few awesome creations to be framed and displayed in our home.

 

We, as well as our kids, can pick up their art books anytime and view the special pieces and remember the stories behind them. Rather than keep these precious items hidden away in a tote to fade and age (because they will, regardless of how airtight the bin), we are all able to enjoy looking at them as often as we want.

 

We could even print copies of the photographed artwork and enlarge them, frame them, turn them into gifts, etc. I absolutely love that regardless of water damage, fire, dust, heat, or any other force that would destroy the original pieces, we will have a digital record of these precious memories via Dropbox. Even if my phone crashes and I lose all of my photos (oh, that would suck), I have them protected in Dropbox. I also can easily share the images with my husband and extended family.

 

For maintenance, I plan to keep my handy background (the white tote lid) in an easily accessible place. When my children bring home a work of art, I will photograph it as soon as possible, upload it to Dropbox, add it to a Chatbooks photo book, and then pitch it immediately. If I am going to keep it, I will have it framed as soon as I can. If it has a handprint on it, or if it is a Christmas ornament, I will either laminate it (if I can) or store where my other precious ornaments are kept. I will no longer be using the “throw it in a pile on the counter and I will deal with it later” method.

 

I know that this process will not be for everyone. There will many people who have all kinds of feelings about throwing away these items, but this is working for us, and that is what matters to me. If your current “system” is failing you and causing you stress, I highly encourage you to give this a try, too!

 

If you do not already have a Chatbooks account, you can get one here and earn get $10 off your first purchase. When you order your first Chatbooks, I will earn a $15 credit.

 

I recently purchased a ton of frames from IKEA, measured all the artwork I wanted to frame, and ordered mats for each piece. Once all the mats arrive and we get everything framed and hung up, I will create a post with the details!