Minimizing - My childhood edition :)

I've continued my process of de-cluttering and minimizing our house and life.  Although I accomplished a lot this winter I'm still trying to get into the daily habit of giving away, throwing away and buying less.

My project had a fun/challenging twist when I visited my mom this month and looked closer at the boxes of my childhood treasures/collections in her garage.  I enjoyed the process of minimizing; I had saved the craziest things!  I'm talking VHS tapes of my dance recitals/graduation, printouts (???) of emails from college (on matrix dot paper), and even my baby teeth.  Yes.  My teeth.  I have NO idea what I was saving them for?

Most of my papers, notes, greeting cards, letters and scrapbooks went into the recycling bin.  I ended up filling my mom's container!

College text books, novels, tourist souvenir books from Europe (did anyone else buy those on trips in the 90's?) and children's books were given away.

My remaining costumes, school dance dresses, ballet costumes and vintage clothing (hats, gloves) went on Etsy, for the girls to wear or given away.  My oldest daughter wore my 9th grade lavender dyed kitten heels whenever possible that week!

A couple VHS tapes went into the trash (taped Oprah shows???) and the rest to Costco to be turned into DVDs.  Fortunately I was able to preview the tapes ahead since my mom *still* has a VHS player. Ha!

Last but not least were a few random things shown below.  My "butt pillow", Annie lunch box and my music box bear.

I wanted to toss my "butt pillow" but my children demanded that we keep it.  This little beauty was made for me by my sister out of an old pair of jeans.  It has friendship bracelets tied on top (*love*), and names of friends and favorite song lyrics written on it in black pen (classy).  The back has decorations including some 80s studs!

I digress. So although I would have liked to de-clutter that sucker into the trash it is now in my daughter's playroom and they love it. 

The lunchbox was given away after I took photos of each side. And the teddy is still at my moms since it belonged to my older sister too.  The wind up mechanism still works!

I had been feeling pretty good about my progress, getting rid of a few boxes and minimizing down to just a couple boxes (hello yearbooks from pre-school to college!).   

Then mom brought me 4 folders full of my childhood drawings, letters, report cards, assessments, student of the month photos and class assignments that she had filed away for me all these years.  Sigh.  

Most of these gems were from my early childhood and I hadn't seen them in decades (or ever).  I enjoyed looking at them at first but became overwhelmed by the amount and felt bad about simply tossing them all.

So I decided make a photo book similar to the ones I create for my own kids.  Of course this book would need to be MUCH bigger since it was so many years worth of memories.

I spent a couple hours photographing the many many papers in those files.  Some to use in a book and others to just have a record of (letters of acceptance to college, assessments, etc).  Then I uploaded the 200+ photos to Shutterfly.

That particular weekend was kismet as I had a code for a free book and they were running a 1st-time ever promotion of unlimited additional pages for no extra cost!  So I ended up getting a 80 page 8x11 hardback book shipped to me for only $20.  Yes that's right, $20.  It would normally have cost almost $200!  

The book arrived this week and I am *in love*.  The finished product is amazing, the pages look just like my drawings (which have darkened with age) but are all tucked into a neat book.  I'm thrilled!  My kids think it's pretty cool too and enjoyed looking at mommy's drawings from when she was little.

"Look mom you made a turkey hand too". 

A few tips

• Take photographs in a light room during the day.
• Try to put them in chronological order if possible.
• Put the papers on a white background, I used a pillowcase.
• Don't forget awards, newspaper clippings or 3 dimensional projects.
• In Shutterfly use a 8x11 book so you can spread out, especially with their "spreads layout" option; visually it's more powerful and true to the original art.
• Make your book ahead and then wait for a FREE code or fantastic sale.
• This would make a wonderful gift for a grown-up child! 

For more information on De-Cluttering/Minimizing

10 Questions to Help you Declutter (aka I still have wedding napkins).
Bye Bye Big Baby
Photo Books of Kids Art

I may have to post more about my "butt pillow" someday, it is pretty 1980s awesome.  

Bye Bye Big Baby

During the process of de-cluttering our house we also got rid of quite a few of my girl's toys, dolls and books (even FPLP!!!).  One of the toys that left our house was the much loved "Big Baby" doll.  Big Baby got her name back when my oldest was only 2.  At the time all of her dolls had inspired names like: Pink Baby, Blue Baby, Little Baby, etc.  So obviously this huge doll had to be named "Big Baby".

Big Baby was fantastic since she was big enough to wear my daughter's baby clothes and she looked like a real baby (which sometimes gave me a start when I'd come into a room and see her sitting there).

Often my daughter would insist on pushing Big Baby around in her stroller and would buckle her into the seat next to her in the car.

Big Baby was still in the house when my youngest daughter was born.  She also loved Big Baby and we took many photos of them side by side.

These are just a few of the dozens of photos we've taken over the years with our girls and Big Baby.  So you can imagine that I was a bit sentimental about this big huge doll that had been with my girls all this time.  But, following the De-Cluttering checklist I saw that it was time.

So we took one last photo of Big Baby with the girls before we donated it.  Now hopefully another little person is loving on Big Baby!

I still have napkins from my wedding: De-cluttering Tips

This spring I've been motivated to de-clutter and minimize my house and simplify my life.  I think it was the combination of friends doing the same, watching The Minimalists on Netflix (great film!) and also needing an activity to keep me busy after Dad died.

I started going through my house one room, one drawer and one closet at a time.  I walked through this de-cluttering checklist and before I knew it I'd filled my van twice with stuff to get rid of. 

Now the fact that I have so much crap is nothing to be proud of, but I am feeling better/proud of seeing it leave my house!

I'm also working on minimizing what I bring into the house by buying less but that's a story for another day.

During my room by room process of getting rid of items I found a few interesting discoveries including a box full of cocktail napkins from my wedding.....13 years ago.

Now you may ask how that box had managed to move across the country and across town into 3 different homes?  Well...I guess I was sentimental and thought I'd use them someday.  You know for my 25th anniversary or something.  Ha!

To make the saving situation worse the napkins weren't even personalized, they were just purchased at a wedding supply store. Sigh.  

So I realized that I needed to get rid of them (#1, #4 & #8 on the list above).  I had the realization that they'd be a perfect size for my girl's lunch boxes.  They loved the idea of having a piece of our wedding at school each day and told all their friends about it.

Hooray, it's a win-win.  My kids get napkins (which they needed) and I get more space in my cabinet.  I plan on keeping the very last one for my wedding scrapbook, but it will be awhile before we use all these.

I'm sure I'll be back with more de-cluttering discoveries, you never know what you'll find in a box or drawer around here. :)

Photo Books of Kids Art

Today I have to show off our super cute Art Photo books that I made for each girl.  I am a pretty sentimental and as a result I save everything from baby clothes to lost teeth to kid's art projects.  However, I am trying to do better/save-less and found a pretty easy way to downsize the kid's art.

Since my oldest was a little I've used our ottoman to store her art.  It was pretty under control until we added a second artist.  This summer I decided to do something about it so I sorted, labeled and then photographed their best/favorite pieces.

I ended up with 3 garbage bags of recycling when we were all done.  It was freeing and I didn't feel the loss since I had photos!

After uploading the photos to Shutterfly I made an 8x11 photo book for each girl.  I called them each "Volume 1" since I'll be making more of these in the future.

Both photo books were practically free (just shipping) as I waited to order them until Shutterfly had a free book promotion.

Shutterfly already had a template for little artists so it was very simple to slide in my photos and use the existing embellishments.  I also added a few photos of my artists in action.  

I recommend using the full page layout feature when possible as it makes a big impact visually.

And don't forget to take photos of other forms of art, not just paintings/drawings.

On the back of the book I included big photos of my cuties.

The ottoman is already starting to fill up again, looks like I'll be making another volume before I know it. :)

Tip: As projects come home from school take photos before recycling them.  I'm also taking photos of dioramas (for social studies) and science projects.

Shutterfly often has great promotions on photo books especially around the holidays.  Until November 14th if you're a new customer you can get a free 8x8 book using this link.  It will only cost a little to upgrade to the more art friendly 8x11 size.

For more of my Shutterfly projects check out:

Shutterfly Tips and Hints

Fisher Price ABCs Book

Little People Playing Cards