Do This!

Thanks to a facebook friend, I discovered a simplifying movement from White House Black Shutters. It's called 40 Bags in 40 Days. You're basically giving up your clutter for lent. All you have to do is fill a bag a day for 40 days. Garbage or donation....it doesn't matter. It can be a big garbage bag or a small grocery bag. Just fill a bag and get it out of your house!

I'm doing to do it. You should too! And if you're worried about finding enough stuff to get rid of for 40 days, trust me. I'll bet anything you'll be shocked at how much unused, unneeded junk is just sitting in your home.

Let's start today! Join me?

Does It Bring Me Joy?

As you could probably tell by my last post two weeks ago, it's been a bit of a struggle around here. I want to say that it hasn't changed much in the past two weeks, but that's not true. From struggle comes growth and we've definitely done some growing!

We knew that simplifying our lives would be a journey and that we'd have to learn from some mistakes along the way. Well, even though we have made some changes, things just weren't working. After weeks of feeling aggravated and stressed out - which ultimately ended up causing a combo panic/asthma attack one afternoon - I had to take a step back. This is not what I wanted. This is not what I was supposed to be feeling. It was time to stop, re-evaluate, and ask some questions.

What is the issue?
I am still feeling overwhelmed. Overwhelmed by stuff. Overwhelmed by tasks. I feel like I'm doing so much with not much to show for it. Our family relationships are suffering because we're all stressed out and exhausted.

What do we want from this journey?
We want to live purposefully. We want everything that we do to bring us as much joy as possible. We want to enjoy life and not feel as though life is swallowing us whole.

How can we get there?
Eliminate, repair, or modify the things that are not bringing us joy.

Let me explain our "How can we get there" statement. We believe that everything we do or own requires a certain amount of work to keep it functional. Every item in our house requires work (yes, even the kid toys - you know all that work it takes to clean it up multiple times per day?). Every activity we do requires work. If the amount of work required for an activity or item is causing more stress than the amount of joy that it is bringing to us, then that activity or item is no longer functional for our family. Obviously there are the "no choice" things like doing laundry or dishes or going to a job or school, but there's still a certain amount of joy in each one of those. We enjoy wearing clean clothes and eating off of clean dishes. We enjoy the income a job brings and we enjoy the friends that we meet through school. But when the optional items are causing a problem, it's time to ask ourselves if it's worth it anymore.

We've had to apply that to our pets as well. We loved our guinea pigs, but when it came down to it, I was stressed out from the work required to maintain their cage and the money it was taking to purchase their food and bedding (close to $30 per month - that's $360 per year!). I was not getting much joy and that money could be used to pay down our mortgage or student loans. After some serious evaluation, we decided to re-home the guinea pigs. Thankfully we found a home quickly and there are four little girls who were very excited to welcome guinea pigs into their lives. We are happy that they are bringing joy to someone. We are currently having to evaluate the role our three cats play in our lives and deciding how to approach it. It's not easy, but when animals are causing actual damage to your home and relationships, then it's time to find a way to fix it. The animals deserve a better life than that too.

Training yourself to ask "Does it bring me joy?" whenever you are making a decision isn't easy, but well worth it. I'm finding that it's easier to purge our belongings when I ask myself that question. If the answer isn't a definite yes, then I don't need it in my life.

Progress!

Today is a day I must remember.  If I ever feel like we're just floating along and not quite getting anywhere fast with our simplifying, I will look back on this day and be encouraged.

You see, I've been purging the house for a while now and have taken a few small trips to Goodwill and have sold some stuff, but there was still a very large pile of items in my garage that we didn't need anymore.  It was stuff from the house and stuff from random boxes stored in the garage.  Stuff we've been carrying around unnecessarily for years.  After having said pile sit in our garage for months with grand plans to sell it on craigslist or ebay or whatever, I made the decision to just get it out of our lives.  How long would it take me to go through, take pictures, decide on prices, post online, and wait for someone to MAYBE buy the items?  Too long and I didn't want to wait.  It was over-complicating our whole simplicity goal.  So without taking a second look to reminisce about what was in those boxes, I loaded them into my car.

When everything was finally loaded, I took a step back and what I saw was inspiring.  The back of my station wagon was literally filled to the roof with stuff.  There wasn't space for one more thing.  And my garage?  There was space....wide open free space in my garage.  It was so freeing.  We didn't need all that stuff.  We thought we needed that stuff, but it's been sitting in the garage for months and we hadn't missed a single item. And now it's gone from our lives and our home (and garage) is a better place because of it.

There is still a small pile of higher ticket items that we will try to sell (baby swing, high chair, etc), but the little space consuming, dust collecting knick-knacks are gone.  One more hour of work this weekend and we will finally be able to park a car in our garage.  Yes, it's THAT clean now!

I love results and I love feeling like we're doing something good for our household.  I am encouraged again.

Trip Planning

Starting my simplicity challenge, the thought of preparing and planning for trips never entered my mind.  But why not?  Everyone wants their trips to be simple and stress free.  I know I do!  This is going to be interesting...

I wonder if when you have everything household-wise simplified and organized, preparing for trips naturally becomes easier.  Or maybe it's just the kind of thing that will always be stressful, especially when you have small children.  I'm not stress free right now.  Things are not as simple as I want them to be.  I am avoiding tackling today's list (obviously, or else I wouldn't be blogging right now) because I get overwhelmed thinking about this entire week.  I expect to be absolutely looney with stress by Friday.  But I don't want to be.  So here's the goal for this week:  

Focus on the tasks that HAVE to be done and don't worry about the extras.

I want to come home to a perfectly clean house, but does it really matter if the downstairs bookshelf has a few DVDs out of place?  No, so I need to not worry about that.  I will take a look at my to-do list for the week and see if there's anything from Friday (a very busy day) that I can move to Wednesday or Thursday, just to ease up on last minute tasks.

So I need to knock this expectation of being stressed out right out of my head and decide that I WANT to be calm and prepared this week.  My children deserve a mom who isn't raising her voice every five minutes, my husband deserves a wife who welcomes his hugs instead brushing them off because there's still something that needs to be done, and I deserve to start my trip with a clear mind.  I wanted a challenge and now I've really got one!

Home Storage Solutions 101

I'm really throwing myself into this simplicity thing right now.  Maybe it's because I felt like I was lagging a bit during October, or maybe I just really want to get through the holidays and start a new year feeling like life is fantastic.  So, I'm now doing this along with everything else:

It's week two (or week 45, since she's looping the weeks through next year as well) and I feel awesome about my progress.  Seriously, I've spent maybe three hours total and my boys' bedroom is so much more organized.  I didn't even buy any new storage containers (although I plan to buy a new laundry hamper for their closet and a set of three Rubbermaid (or similar) drawers for my six year old's Legos).

Every little bit of new cleaning, organizing, or planning routine that I'm taking part in is saving me countless hours each week.  Yes, it's scheduled cleaning, etc, but I'm not having to spend a full day working on something like I was before.  I can spend an hour or two in the morning or late afternoon while the boys are otherwise engaged, make a big difference in our household, and then go about the rest of my business.  I'm getting in so much more playtime with my kids since I've started all this.  And to me, that makes it all worth it.

Prepared!

Can I just say how happy I am that I decided to follow the Stress Free Holiday Series from Household Management 101?  I feel so on top of things, it's ridiculous.

My Halloween decorations were put away within two days of Halloween passing.  I'm the only one in my entire neighborhood who has taken decorations down.  The decorations went straight into a new storage container that was promptly labeled and put on a shelf in the garage, where it is sitting pretty for next Halloween.

Even though I don't host for Thanksgiving, I always contribute a few dishes.  Those are now planned, so I can be ready to whip them up and take them to my in-laws for the meal.  Planning this out was especially important since we'll be out of town right before Thanksgiving and I didn't want any last minute scrambling for what I needed to bring to dinner.

I can't really believe I'm talking about Christmas yet, but I know November will fly right by me.  Half of the Christmas presents are already purchased (although I am still waiting on most of them to actually arrive).  This is huge.  I don't know when I last shopped for presents before Thanksgiving.

And, to make it official, I just ordered our Christmas cards.  They'll arrive before Thanksgiving and be ready to go in the mail on December 1st.

Starting this challenge has been the best thing I've done for our family (and my mental health) in a really long time!

Grocery Challenge Month #2

What a strange month.  With everything that was going on (mentioned in my previous post), it was quite difficult to stick to anything.  Having just gone over all the receipts from October and looking at our financial records, I have to admit that I'm confused.  Here's why:

We went over budget again; in fact, we went over $52 more than we did in September.  We spent more on food, but less on household items.  Food cost $450 in October!  Apparently my desired food budget of $300 does not include candy heavy months (thanks, Halloween) or stress-induced cravings.  Blah.  And yes, I can almost guarantee you that that additional $150 was spent on candy and snacks that we probably didn't need.  However, even though we've been over budget for the past two months, the amount of money we have left in the bank account at the end of each pay period is steadily increasing.  Um, what?

I haven't looked closely enough to see what might be making the difference, but I have some theories.

1) Even though we've been over our desired grocery/household budget for the past two months, we are still spending less (anywhere from $50-$200 less) each month than when we weren't actively trying to stick to a budget.  So that's awesome.

2) We're spending less in other areas.  We've essentially stopped eating fast food, except for once or twice in the past couple of months, so our dining out expenses have dropped big time.  It's good for the wallet AND for the waistline.  Plus, we're just not buying as much stuff as we used to.  Trying to limit our possessions has made us all think twice before purchasing anything: "Do we REALLY need this?".  Trips to Target (oh, what a  problem store for shopaholics!) have decreased immensely, with me not even setting foot in a Target for nearly two months until mid-October when my six year old needed new clothes.

3) I'm selling our crap.  I haven't looked at how much I've made since I started selling the stuff we don't need anymore, but I will bet you anything that it's over $600.  That money has been going right into the bank account (except for the past two weeks, when I built up some money to spend on ebay for Christmas presents).

All in all, it's been very interesting so far to see what happens when we make lifestyle changes.  I don't think we're doing anything super amazing or drastic or revolutionary, but I'm hoping that by making positive changes in our life, I can encourage others to do the same.

Household Management Stress Free Holiday Series

Household Management 101 is having a 13 week series on how to have a stress free holiday season, covering from Halloween through New Years. I'm excited about this one and plan on challenging myself to this as I go about my simplicity plan. You should try it too! Everyone wants stress free holidays, right? I'll keep the series button up on my blog just below the links and websites so you don't have to go digging through posts to find it again.

What A Challenge!

A top news story on Yahoo today is about one couple who was able to retire by age 43 by leaving below their means.  Of course, they didn't have children, so it was probably a lot easier to do than it would be for those of us with families, but what an interesting challenge.  What amazes me is how quickly they did it: In about 15 years after making the decision to go for it.  I don't know....could you make those kind of sacrifices in order to leave the work force so early?  You can read their story here: 5 Tips from Early Retirees.

The Grocery Side of the Challenge

Like I mentioned previously, I'm attempting to keep our food budget for our family of four to $300 per month (essentially forcing me to stick to meal plans, shopping lists, and using everything in my fridge/pantry) and our household basics (toilet paper, detergent, shampoo, pet food, etc) to $100 per month.  Luckily I decided to start this at the beginning of a month so I can easily keep track of how I'm starting out.  I waited to go shopping until we were literally down to rice and carrots.  This means two large shopping trips (Fred Meyer and Costco) needed to happen, but they should be the biggest of the month and hopefully a few things will carry us quite far.  Here's how it's adding up as of today, 9/8:

Food: $216.43
Household: $57.33

That means I have remaining for the rest of month:

Food: $83.57
Household: $42.67

The remaining household budget shouldn't be a problem.  The only other things we might need to get this month would be shampoo, nighttime pull-ups for my three year old, and cat food/litter.  In fact, I anticipate that we won't reach the $100 limit most months because I try to buy all my household basics at Costco and they tend to last me 2-3 months.

The remaining grocery budget could prove to be challenging.  We were seriously out of everything though, so I had to restock the entire kitchen.  I don't anticipate having to restock quite so much each month because I get my baking ingredients at Costco as well, so that will last a little while as well.  This is really going to depend on what I can do meal planning wise and how much batch cooking I can manage.  It's going to be interesting for sure.  I won't decide to make any changes to the food budget for a couple of months though.  I want to get a decent picture of what we REALLY need before I decide that $300 isn't working.

I'll definitely keep you updated on how it's going.

The Beginning

Well, here I am.  Jumping into a trying a new way of life and dragging my family along with me.  Go ahead and call me crazy - but wouldn't you agree that if something doesn't feel like it's working, that it's time to try something else?  That's all I'm doing.  Trying something new.  It might work and it might not, but either way, I know I'll learn something along the way.  Maybe all I'll take away from this is a few new organization tips or a couple time saving dinner prep techniques.  But even then, I'll consider this whole thing worth it.  Nothing exciting happens from sitting on my rear and assuming that things won't get any better.

Admittedly the biggest part of this challenge is going to be sticking with it, so I'm setting up a time frame.  Nothing as big as a full year and nothing so wimpy as a measly 30 days - I am committing to doing this until the clock indicates the very first second of 2012.  That should give me just enough time to see if what I'm doing is making any difference.  Sure, it might not be a huge difference by then, but it will be long enough to figure out if we're all just miserable.

I invite you to commit to the simplicity challenge with me - as little or as much as you feel comfortable with.  Here are my three beginning goals so you can follow along:

1) Begin our new sleep schedule.  Our five year old begins morning kindergarten in one week and we HAVE to be there at the same time every weekday.  Kids in bed at 8pm, lights off by 9pm.  Adults in bed by 10:30pm, lights off by 11pm.  Adults awake at 6am, kids awake at 6:30am.  We are not morning people, so this is a huge deal and probably the biggest lifestyle change I think we'll end up making.  I don't expect this schedule to change at all.

2) Create and stick with daily, weekly, and monthly housework plans.  This one will probably take some tweaking as I figure out what works, what doesn't, and how often things should realistically be done.  As OCD as I feel sometimes, I will realize that we have small children and a perfect house is not going to happen.  Our home will be lived in, but not filthy.

3) Create weekly meal plans and complete a few batch meals to keep in the freezer each month.  My goal is to attempt a monthly grocery budget (not including household items like detergent, shampoo, toilet paper, etc) of $300 for our family of four.  That might not be realistic, but I'm going to try my very best.

As we ease into these top three goals, more will be added, like purging closets, limiting our belongings, and figuring out new organization systems to make housework faster and easier.  You get the idea.

So you are welcome along this journey with us or just feel free to sit back and laugh/cry/shake your head as we try to figure this out.  I'm sure it will provide at least a little entertainment.