Glad to Give

What are your weekend plans? Over here we are dedicating at least one full day to continued purging. Sooo exciting. We’ve been doing that a lot lately and it’s been so good though. Don’t get me wrong – still SO far from a clean, minimalist home (especially as more stuff keeps coming in! happens with three mini-mes) but I feel as though we’re headed in a good direction. Internal high five.

The first big purge? Bringing clothing, furniture, decorations, random bits and so on back into our bedroom space. That master bedroom remodel still doesn’t have a bed, a single piece of artwork up or even a plant to call its own, but living in that minimalist space (picture mattress on the floor and closets, that’s is). Feels so KonMari that it’s crazy. Like, crazy good. I didn’t snap a pic but we filled the pickup to the BRIM with extras in September that we didn’t need anymore and donated it.

Now, we are on to other rooms. Mostly, the girls’ room. The incentive for me is to make space for three little girls in a 12×12′ room, the motivation for the girls is to make a little room for Christmas presents (gotta put the carrot out there somewhere) :).

Where to start? Let’s take a look at the girls’ bookshelf. I adore this bookshelf so much (pic from when we first installed it). We know every book we have on hand and there’s no hunting – they’re right there in the beautiful crystal clear open. But… I hate to give away books… it’s so hard to part with books that your kiddos love to read especially when one of your love languages is book reading (is that an official love language? it should be). The rule right now though is that we can only keep books that fit on the shelf, and that we have a library four blocks away for everything else.

We had way more books than will fit comfortably on that shelf. They were spilling out and it made me nervous that the whole bracket system would come tumbling down.

SO… we packed up a big stack of books and we added them to our giveaway bags.

Here’s Taylor considering…

PS that Giraffes Can’t Dance book there in the front is one of our favorites. It didn’t go anywhere and if I’m aloud to suggest in a giveaway post, you should totally get it.

One side note is on how difficult it is to affirm your kids’ giveaway suggestions. There were some books that I totally pulled out of the pile because I had a we can’t give that one away! moment. There were others that I added secretly. I do think it’s important to honor your children’s sacrificing though and we’re parting with some books that I secretly love, even if I know that they never choose them for story time.

Another area of concern – clothing and toys. Our built-ins are what we use for storage in this space, no closets.

We regularly purge clothing. We still have too much. And yet somehow we’re still missing items (socks? leggings? an extra sweater?). It feels like there’s always a reason to go shopping (heyyyy Kidizen) with growing children. But we’ve been in a giveaway mentality so I’ve been allowing myself to only keep what I love to dress the girls in (plus some occasional items that Liv is all about). I have to say, it is nice to have two of the three not really care what they wear.

Here’s the beauty of giving things away… it feels so good to pass on items that you know others need. And it’s awesome for the girls to feel that, too. We’re not always great about reinforcing how lucky they are to have toys and food and clothing, but sometimes making tangible decisions to follow through on a dinner time prayer that includes ‘let’s pray for those who are in need tonight’ is good.

When Glad reached out about their Glad to Give program I was all about it. You can schedule a free pickup at your door which is great because it’s sometimes tricky to haul one or even a ton of bags to your local donation spot. We had already given away our bedroom/garage stuff, but now after the girls witnessed us do it, they got to try it out themselves. And we’re going to do more! We’re still overstuffed.

So no sainthood earned over here today, but hopefully I can slowly pass on less of my hoarding and more of the giving skills to the kiddos. I think there’s something kind of neat about this accountability over here, too! I’ll keep you updated on our progress. This weekend should be a doozy.

PS above is a sneak peek on the deck Kevin just recently added to just outside of the bedroom remodel!