Uncluttering with Joshua Becker

I have been slowly, slowly, starting to try to pare down our possessions. I started last year with my closet, trying out the capsule wardrobe idea from project 333. I didn't quite make it to 33 items but I really liked it and want to redo it now that summer is coming. It's harder because I am continually changing sizes (I just finished losing the baby weight from P and am now 5 weeks pregnant so...). I know that I'm more motivated because our garage is chock full of Adam's physical therapy equipment for his new clinic which just points out how much other stuff we have. It's frustrating because I can't very effectively go through the kid clothes we have - we (thankfully) get lots of hand me downs but I KNOW we have too much of several sizes, I just can't access all the bags of clothes easily. Anyway, I'm rambling. The point was that I just bought Joshua Becker's book The More of Less because it got me free admission into a 12 week "uncluttered" course. My friend was doing it and told me about it. The book was pretty good and a quick read. It provided lots of the "why" and a few of the "how"s but hopefully the course itself will provide even more.

I find myself more deliberately thinking about how much stuff we actually need. How many towels per person? 2? One to use and one to wash? What about beach/swim towels? How many cups should we have? How many pots and pans do we actually need? I also want to start a list of things I want to or need to replace in the semi-near future. Among the things on that list - the blender, the vacuum cleaner, our mattress in the master bedroom, my purse.

The first assignment for the course was to come up with my own "why" of why I want to declutter/minimize. My reasons:

• Less Cleaning 
• Clear Space = Clear Mind (super true for me!)
• Not feel weighed down by STUFF
• Teach my kids that we don't need to own everything
• Waste less
• Save money
• Create a healthy learning environment
• Be more deliberate (in our choices for family activities, in our purchases, etc)

Two days ago I spent a good amount of time decluttering our downstairs bookshelf and little 9-cube storage thing. It's hard because we don't have many places downstairs to keep things but we spend by far the bulk of our time down here. Nonetheless, I managed to get a bag of garbage and a few small bags to give away, plus several stacks of stuff to take upstairs and find a new home for. Now I don't have stuff stacked on top of each other. No more moving my scriptures to get out my recipe box. No more moving my laptop to get Lydia's Math U See manipulatives off the shelf. It doesn't really look too different yet, but it's much more functional. Okay, well some things look nicer, like on top of the 9-cube storage I cleared off a lot of clutter, but for the most part the bookshelves and cubes are still full, they just have less on them so they're not as tightly packed and therefore they're easier to use. We still have a long way to go (don't get me started on Adam's papers... lots of papers...)

Push Back

This past week I got a fair amount of push back from L so I backed off a little bit. L is very bright but she tends to get frustrated very easily. I can always tell when her brain shuts off and she gets into "I can't do it" mode. It can be very challenging to pull her out of that funk, and one of my major goals with her is to teach her to persevere in spite of frustration and difficulty because she CAN do it, most of the time, even if she needs to try more than once, try different things, or ask for help.

Anyway, she's been pushing back particularly about math lately. She's still working through Math U See alpha. We were doing +2's and she has trouble if she starts with the smaller number (2+7 instead of 7+2). If she starts with 7, she easily adds two more to get 9, but if she starts with 2, she keeps counting from 2 up to 7 and stops there. She tends to forget that she can turn it around if she needs to, and she doesn't usually get the blocks herself. If I pull the blocks out and direct her she can do it just fine, but I have to be vigilant to make sure she doesn't flip the "turn off brain" switch before I can help her because if she does, it's hopeless for now (and the worst is that, even if she's beyond frustrated and won't try at all she FREAKS OUT if I put it away for a few minutes and take a break!). We pushed through the +2's and are almost done with the first solving for unknown - again she does really well with the blocks, or if I make it into a story problem, but she struggles a little when it's abstract - just numbers. I know she'll get there and I'm not in a rush so we are taking it pretty easy.

We've also been doing classes at the Y. L, H, and P are all in swim, H does tumbling, and L is taking a sports class. I'm also taking swim lessons and adult beginner rock climbing, which have both been super fun. :) All the classes do take up some time, but I think it's worth it. I'm determined that my kids will be comfortable in the water and proficient swimmers BEFORE they're teenagers! This session is just ending and it's almost time to sign up again. I'm going to try to keep the same classes.

Today I pulled out the acrylic craft paints and let the kids go wild with paper for a little while. L really loves to paint, and I think H does too, though he doesn't try to paint specific figures yet, he makes very nice lines :) L is learning to use a compass to make circles to paint in because she saw me do that with a painting one day.

We finished the Boxcar Children (she wants to read ALL the boxcar children books now!) and this week Sonlight sent out a letter with the missing schedule for the two books that we got that weren't included in the IG, The Llama Who Had No Pajama (which we already read... twice... since it got here a few weeks ago), and Least of All. I'm glad they send out corrections, but it is a little annoying to write the info into the IG myself.

Playing Boxcar Children in the yard. L is behind the boys, and the pool is the Boxcar.