One Step At A Time...

I don't know if any of you follow or have heard of Dave Ramsey . He is a money guru who has an awesome book called the Total Money Makeover (which I totally recommend to everyone!). In his book, he talks about the snowball effect which is about how a small change can motivate you to keep making bigger changes, like how a snowball gets larger as it rolls down a hill. He applies this example to getting out of debt but I am using it to talk about my journey to reclaiming my house from stuff. Yesterday, I talked about how just deeply purging clothes made my house feel lighter and helped to settle the constant chaos that we felt. The day after I started the clothing, I decided to tackle another job that I had been putting off: my yarn stash/cabinet. The doors would not even shut on it anymore because it was so messy. It was a big task but I had this mindset that it was going to be done. Before and After I moved on from there and tackled the entertainment cabinet and tided and ...

Picture it: I am standing at my washing machine, I have approximately 5 baskets of clean clothes, 5 baskets of dirty clothes, over stuffed dressers and empty ones. I am on the verge of tears as I add clothes that I had literally just washed the day before but they were not even worn on a body yet. Why was I was washing them because they ended up on my kid's bedroom floor because there was no room in their dresser. I felt like failure. I am failing at this homemaking gig. We are drowning in stuff, it is everywhere. Just stuff everywhere. My house is in a constant state of chaos. No one is at ease or at peace. My husband is working 11 hour days and coming home to a house that looked like a bomb went off in each and every room. I am seriously failing in my job as a homemaker, wife and mother. I was becoming tired of trying to organize and clean with no results. The reason as I quickly learned is that you cannot organize when you simply have too much stuff. All you are doing is ...

I am tired. I am tired of giving all without being filled back up. I am empty, my needs have all been placed on the back burner. I have got to start taking care of myself properly. It is okay to put your needs first. I am learning that things that others classify as selfish, are not.  I am not selfish to spend extra money on healthy food to nourish my body.  I am not selfish for loosing myself in a knitting project or a Xbox game, in order to combat the stress that I feel and instead of tackling the dishes in the sink or the mess on the floor.  I am not selfish for telling my kids to go play and give me a little bit of quiet.  I am not selfish for telling others no, I cannot help with that right now. I am not selfish for finding a place where heart is blessed and happy. I am not selfish for taking 30 minutes a day to do yoga. I am not being selfish when I need a break from my husband, kids and dogs. I am simply learning and choosing to refill my cup s...

Learning to love yourself is a very long journey. It is something every human needs to learn. We may not always be happy with how we look, how much we weigh, or hair color etc but we must always love ourselves. How can we learn to be positive in other areas of our lives, if all we are doing is tearing ourselves down and focus on the negatives? Each one of us deserve love, happiness and who better to find it in then yourself? If we start there and allow others to see us love ourselves be taking care of our bodies, souls and minds. who knows what could happen! I believe that until we learn to love ourselves, no one else can truly and deeply love us. We are each amazing in our own ways. We are not made to be a carbon copy of someone! We are made to be uniquely and authentically us! Show yourself some love today! 

So this year, I have been making a lot of changes in my own body, mind, and spirit. I have started changing my lifestyle where my health is concerned. I need to lose weight. Simply put. It is not something that I would like to do, it has become a need to do. I battled postpartum depression for over a year, I was on medication for it but it seemed like all that was happening was that I was having to up my dosage of it. It was helping but I was not feeling better about myself, my role at a wife and as a mother. There was something missing still. In February, I started out all on my own by cutting out mindless snacking at night. That is all I did. I lost 5 lbs in 3 wks from that alone. In March I started exercising everyday for a minimum of 20 mins. More weight and inches came off. In April, i changed my eating habits. More weight and inches gone. However, something still felt like it was missing. I did not have any external support. Adam did the best that he could but he was only one...