Granting myself Grace...

As a mother, we often have to give our children the room to fail. To have a shortcoming and be ok with not being perfect at everything. As a Christian, I call it granting grace to my children. I do it when they can't clean up messes by themselves, or when they need extra help with something. But, we rarely extend this grace to ourselves.

I am not a housewife at heart. Cleaning and meal plans are not second nature to me. I often beat myself up about thid. I SHOULD keep a tidy house effortlessly, and be able to whip up a month worth of yummy freezer foods in 30 minutes and bake bread from scratch twice daily. I mean, any good housewife can, right?

But the thing I am the worst at? Clothes management. I don't save clothes for the younger kids as the older ones outgrow them. I am saving a few things for Reese since she is so close in size to Anna-Lee now, but as a rule I don't save clothes by size and season. We just buy clothes from the thrift store and sales and consignment places as needed. I spend around $2-400 a year on clothes for all 5 of us. Hubby and I of course keep clothes since we don't have growth spurts to worry about!

I've decided to grant myself some grace in this area. Its ok to not save and store every article of clothes in case we can use it again down the road. By donating it, I'm passing it on to another thrifty mama for her little ones. I'm letting myself stay sane, save space (we have no room to store totes of clothes even if I were so inclined), and I remind myself that its ok to not be perfect. Now, I've got 30 minutes and 25 meals to cook if you'll excuse me.

Where can you stand to give yourself a little grace? Maybe you beat yourself up about sleep issues with your baby. Its ok to have a crappy sleeper. Eventually they outgrow it, or are old enough that a doctor will listen and help. Maybe your body doesn't want to let go of those last few pregnancy pounds...curves are HOT! Be gentle with yourselves, and extend the grace we as mothers give to everyone else to yourself once in a while. You'll be glad you did.

Nutrifying/Simplifying

I've been eating so badly lately. Not even bad foods, though that's definitely part of it. But not enough foods. In fact, one good, hearty meal a day has been pretty amazing the past week or so. Which of course leads me to finding myself rundown, shaky, weak, and having a general "icky" feeling at the end of the day. So I'm on a mission to start eating better meals. And more of them!

This led DH and I to the grocery store tonight where he bought me a yummy steak for dinner. I haven't been getting enough protein, obviously, and the steaks I love were on special. So we splurged on steaks tonight. While there I wanted to pick up some hamburger buns for lentil sloppy joes and a loaf of bread. Which is odd, since I haven't bought bread in months. But I wanted a loaf anyway. I wound up not getting any bread or buns.

Why, you ask?

Because EVERY SINGLE LOAF I looked at in Hy-Vee's bread aisle had high fructose corn syrup! I used to not care about it at all. But especially since finding out it has mercury in it, I am trying to eliminate it from everything in our house. And it's the one "health kick" thing that I have DH's full support in. Although we're both hypocritical and drink Dr. Pepper with it in there. That's being replaced with brewed iced tea slowly but surely, though. We looked at a ton of different brands, and sure enough, half way through the ingredient list there it was. So I'm schlepping it over to the bread machine before I pour myself into bed and setting it up to have a loaf ready in the morning.





I am working hard on organizing and simplifying our home. My bathroom is now spotless. It's also the laundry room. A week ago the floor in there was covered in laundry from one end to the other! Our living room looks a lot better, too. We're selling things; just this week we've gotten rid of our old Playstation and a stroller. The organizing is harder than the getting rid of things. I think some things I've gotten rid of have been simply for lack of the willpower to organize!

Our toyroom and the girls' room are the last two I'm tackling. They SCARE me, lol. Toys just overwhelm me. If it were up to me, they'd have bare basics, and nice simple wooden toys. Budget and over zealous grandparents, however, prevent this. We have plenty of toys, and plenty of storage for said toys. But when it comes to what should be grouped with what, and where those things should go, I find myself clueless. I really need help with organization. The toyroom is the most obvious...but please if you come to visit stay out of the kitchen cabinets, too. ;)

Welcome!

I'm up late, which happens often in this house. Everyone else is asleep, I can even hear the dogs snoring away in the kitchen. Like usual, I find my mind racing with thoughts. I wish I weren't tired and unable to sleep. If I were more awake I could use these late nights to focus on spending time in prayer and devotion. I'm afraid if I tried to do such things now I'd fall asleep in the middle of it and wind up filled with frustration rather than faith.

Tonight the thoughts are all about decluttering and simplifying our home. We simply have way too many things. Especially toys. How many toys do two little girls really need? We have a large Little Tykes vanity that gets played with rarely. The only part about it that gets acknowledged is the mirror. So why do I keep this big, honking thing in the corner of the toyroom when I can just hang a mirror on the wall and have the same effect?

The only large toys I want to keep are the Train/Lego table and accessories, and an easel. Oh, and their table/chair set, but that's not really a toy as much as it is a work surface. Then some playsilks, their dolls (each has one cloth one and one "regular" one), wooden dollhouse and accessories, and stuffed animals. Oh, the stuffed animals. Most of my old Beanie Baby collection, and some others that have been added to the mix. I'd get rid of those, but they LOVE them. I've greatly reduced their numbers, however, to about 10% of what it once was.

A place for everything, and everything in it's place. That's the goal for 2009, folks.