Year of the Great Declutter: Episode 1 - Toes in the Water

Mornings are the best time for me to plan out my day and set a couple of realistic goals for myself.  In the morning I can tell what kind of a mood the baby is in, how well my brain is going to work, and I finally know my husband’s plan for the day.

Yesterday, I was feeding the baby and clearing out my emails.  I like my inbox to be filled only with things to which I still need to reply, orders for which I’m waiting, or anything that needs a second read-though later. I followed a link and read this article from Homeyohmy. 

Inspirational goodness!  And I love numbered lists!  I felt so energized, I made my own list and followed it:

1.  Get rid of anything you wouldn't choose to wear today.

I felt inspired to jump right in and clean out some of the clothes that I’ve been building up in my drawers. I didn’t even try anything on. I just looked through them and said, "Is this something I would skip over while looking for what to wear?"  If the answer was yes, it went into the pile. I ended up with quite a pile of clothing.

2.  Get rid of jewelry: broken, missing, or unworn.

Then I pulled out my jewelry organizer and got rid of all the necklaces and earrings I haven’t worn. (I kept all the weird holiday ones, like the shamrocks, because you gotta have green on St. Patrick’s Day.)  But I did throw away the hoops that were missing a pair and the weird ones that I always skip over. Especially ones I bought a vacation. I buy the weirdest jewelry on vacation. 

3.  Take a picture of your good work.

I snapped a picture of the clothes and did a quick inventory.  I want to be able to look back and see how much I've managed to simplify.

I got rid of:

34 shirts

25 camis

12 pieces of jewelry

9 shirts

3 pairs of shorts

2 pairs of pajamas

1 skirt

1 pair of shoes

+ 1 swimsuit

For a total of: 88 items!

4.  Get those clothes out of the house!

The hardest step for me is getting the clothes to the donation bin. They tend to sit in their bags next to the back door, waiting to be loaded in the car.  Then they tend to sit in the back of the car waiting for me to remember that they are there.  Yesterday, I took them straight to the Salvation Army!  

5.  Celebrate your victory over clutter!

We felt so accomplished that baby and I had a celebratory lunch at Jason's Deli.  Yum!  

Sadly, when you look in my dresser or closet, you probably wouldn't even be able to tell that I cleared out so many clothes.  Well, that was just the first attempt, so I have plenty of time to impress myself with my decluttering skills in the future.

2018 Mutual theme cut file in English and Spanish

This year's theme for the youth of our church is "Peace in Christ".

Last week, on our activity night, the girl's painted small boards and applied a decal with the theme.  Then they glued on a clip, so they can display inspirational quotes, pictures or cards with goals written on them.

We found a cute file to use for the girls who wanted their saying in English, but we couldn't find one for those who preferred Spanish.  I made my own version in both languages.  So here you go:

English

Español

If you don't know how to create a cut file from a png in Silhouette Studio, you can use this tutorial.

2018 Mutual Theme Posters in English and Spanish

My family recent was asked to serve in the Spanish speaking congregation at our church.  It has been wonderful!  My Spanish skills are improving, and I love the people we've met.

Specifically, I'm serving with the Young Women, who are 12-18 years old.  Many of the girls are bilingual, but some of them have only recently come to the US, and their English isn't great.  One of the other leaders is a non-Spanish speaker, so we have a rule: "Speak in the language of your heart".  Everyone helps everyone else figure out what is being said, and it works for us.

The room we meet in doesn't have the Young Women's Theme posted in Spanish.  We just hand out little cards each week for those of us who don't have it memorized.  I hunted around for a design to print out, but finding resources in Spanish is tough, and I needed to make sure I could actually read the fonts from across the room.  So I made a poster to put up.  I was inspired by this poster by Kendra at key lime digital designs.  So cute!

The background papers and floral elements are from PixelScrapper, which has awesome resources anyone can use.  The fonts were all free, too, from FontSquirrel and 1001FreeFonts.  I'm way too interested in fonts, so it takes me forever to choose.  That was by far the most time consuming part of this whole thing!

Download

I also made posters for the 2018 Mutual Theme, "Peace in Christ".  The poster we had last year was a piece of copy paper with the scripture verse on it, and I think we can do better!

Download (English)

Download (Español)

All the posters are 16x20.  I was pricing out printing + frames, and, wow!, it got expensive quickly.  So instead, I found a Groupon deal for 16x20 canvases.  I bought mine from CanvasOnSale.  I've used that company before for family pictures, and I love the canvases!  They have really good deals on large sizes.

I'm so excited to hang these beautiful canvases in our room at church!  Maybe I'll be able to keep up when the girls recite it!