Does it spark joy?: Step 1 - Clothes

Three weeks ago I read The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. I figured since I was in this home organization mood why not read a book to keep me motivated. Once I finished this book I realized that I've been going about this organizing thing all wrong. This book teaches you how to approach organizing and that's by decluttering your house first. So I immediately went to work. (And boy was it work). Marie Kondo is the author of this book and she says that it should be done in a precise order to help with the speed of the process.

• Clothes
• Books
• Papers
• Komono (All other miscellaneous categories)
• Sentimental Items (Pictures and anything that brings memories)

Slowly I went to work. I started with my clothes. I gathered all my clothes in the entire house (off season stuff included) and picked every item up and made a decision. I asked myself does it spark joy? This is what Marie Kondo tells us we should ask about every item we hold onto. Once you do this it's easier to let go of things. If it doesn't bring you happiness or you don't use it, why hold onto it? So simple, yet I never applied it to my home....until now.

As you can see Josh and I cleared out bags of clothing. This is only the first day round.  I couldn't believe the amount of things I was holding onto for no good reason. Another aspect that helped the purging was finding the appropriate places to donate to. Knowing that my gently used items would go on to help someone else in need really helped with the letting go process. If you are looking for some local places to donate to here is where we donated to.

Catholic Community Services https://ccsutah.org/donate
YWCA Utah http://www.ywcautah.org/site/c.emJ1KgOQJhIaG/b.7965149/k.C221/Donate.htm
Deseret Industries https://www.deseretindustries.org/donate/donation-guidelines?lang=eng

22 Minute Hard Corps

We just started our new workout program this week. It's called 22 Minute Hard Corps that has a boot camp feeling to it. It's a shorter workout, but is more challenging for us (in a good way). Since we liked the calendar checkoff so much that we used with the T25 program I decided to create another one tailored to this program. I am sharing it here in case anyone else is looking for something to help them stay accountable with 22 Minute Hard Corps.

To print the 22 Minute Hard Corps calendar click HERE
It looks like this:

T25 Workout Calendar

A few months ago I had shared with you  about our T25 workout we were doing. We started it just for fun to help us stick with our new year goals. A couple of weeks ago we actually completed the entire workout program including the bonus T25 Gamma Cycle. This was the longest any of us had ever committed to any type of workout. It was a total of 18 weeks to be exact that we completed. By the way the "we" and "us" I keep referring to is my husband and my mom.  As I had mentioned in my previous post we decided to utilize a check off calendar to keep ourselves accountable.

Here's how it worked. If you completed the workout you get a check mark. It would also help us if we needed to makeup a workout from during the week. We could easily see which day we missed and do the workout. No frills, nothing special, very simple yet helpful. Now I'm all for sharing things I find useful. Because I could find nothing else like this out there I actually made my own checkoff calendars for Alpha, Beta and Gamma. Below I have shared what they look like as well as the link to print it. This was just an added help to keep ourselves accountable that seemed to work. Maybe it will benefit someone else out there who is trying to stay committed to their fitness goals.


For the Alpha Calendar click HERE
This is what it looks like:

For the Beta Calendar click HERE

 This is what it looks like:





 










For the Gamma Calendar click HERE
 This is what it looks like:

Home Organization: Under Kitchen Sink

Recently I found At Home With Nikki. If you are looking for organizational tips definitely look her up. She has inspired me to get my house in order. Confession: I've lived in my home for 5 years and for some reason I didn't fully make it my home. I never really gave everything a place and put things away like they should be. At Home With Nikki also has a YouTube channel that I discovered and it has given me so many ideas on how to organize different areas in my home. I started with small problem areas that I've been meaning to tackle. For example under the kitchen sink. It's always been a mess. It's been a catch all space for anything cleaning. I tried to make use of the space in the past by adding in a shelf a while back, but it didn't help much. But once I saw Nikki's video on her under the kitchen sink ideas I wanted to clean ours up too and make ours more functional.

Here's what the before and after looked like.

Godparents Gift

As you know we recently Baptized our little Lorenzo. Along with the planning of items needed for the actual day we had to decide what we would gift Lorenzo's Godparents. Believe it or not this was a tough task. We wanted it to be something unique, special and significant. There were a lot of ideas out there, but I settled on an Etsy store that made personalized key chains. You can find them here. I thought it was perfect! This was something that they could carry with them and would be a small reminder of the day that they became a Godparent. Below is a picture of what they each turned out like.

Baptism Favors

Our little one will be getting Baptized this weekend! We couldn't be more excited about the big day. A very important day for all of us. There will not be any huge reception party like many do. We don't want to take away from the importance of the actual Sacrament itself. We decided that we would Baptize him and then have just a small lunch with family. To thank those who took the time out of their day to come support us we wanted to have favors. Finding just the right favor was quite the task. I wanted something simple, but unique. I ended up deciding on giving a mini rosary in a keepsake bag with tag. The mini rosaries where just what I had hoped for. I ordered them off of Etsy from Faithpieces. If you were looking for anything like this for your religious event I would highly recommend them. Here is a peek at what I made.

 

 

Organizing Craft Space - Project 2: Pens & Markers Holder

As I mentioned before I have been slowly trying to find new solutions to my craft space. I have started dabbling in lettering a little bit and have accumulated a variety of markers. One pen holder is no longer enough. I needed something slightly larger. I found this neat idea to make a pen and marker holder with repurposed things you might have in your home. Since it wasn't going to cost me much I thought I'd give it a try. Here's what it turned out like.

I used paper towel rolls and an old box.

This is the finished product

If you want to make one of your own this is what you will need:
- Paper towel rolls or toilet paper rolls.
- An old box; shoe box, kleenex box or any box you were going to recycle anyway.
- Decorative paper to wrap the box in. I found mine in the dollar section at Michael's craft store.
- Craft glue and/or tape

Next cut off any excess flaps your box may have.
Then wrap the box with your wrapping paper of choice. I  used glue for the paper on the side and tape on the inside and underneath for extra security.
Place your paper towel rolls inside the box snugly so that they don't move around.
Add your pens/markers/supplies and your done! Enjoy your new holder.