You might remember from last month when I started sharing about our journey to declutter and live with less. At the time I was inspired by Marie Kondo, although we have actually been working towards small changes for a more minimalist lifestyle for about a year. 

In February and the beginning of March our journey continued. I would say, if anything, it intensified. Minimalism is addictive! The more stuff we cleared, the more we realized we could live without. I also started watching videos from The Minimal Mom on YouTube and I checked out Joshua Becker’s book The More of Less from the library. Both were eye-opening and life changing! 

This month we focused on toys, books, our office, the kids’ rooms, the kitchen, and living room. We are not really done in any specific area, and I don’t know that we ever will be, but we are making LOTS of progress. 

Since my last post on this topic, we have managed to get rid of an additional…. [Read more…]

How do you know if your family is ready for a puppy?

In 2017, our dog Lucy passed away from a painful degenerative bone disease. She was an amazing dog but, to be honest, we weren’t sure we would ever bring another dog home while the kids are still young. 

We have five children in our house, and several of them have special needs. They are also spread out between four different schools and between doctors, therapy, caseworker visits, court, etc, we are busy. As much as we missed Lucy, I have to admit we were enjoying the freedom of being able to pick up and go on vacations and not needing to worry about who would come home in the middle of the day to let the dog out if we had plans. 

We looked into the possibility of a therapy dog for Nicholas, but we wanted a dog the entire family could enjoy as a pet. We weren’t sure a dog who would be working with only one of our children the majority of the time was the best option. (Although we still love the possibility of a therapy dog.)

We did not plan to get a puppy, but that’s what happened. We were at a local food festival one weekend and there were a few animal shelters with booths. Naturally, our kids fell in love. Our foster son lit up happier than we had ever seen him while he was snuggling the dogs. He even exclaimed several times, “This is the best day of my life!” One shelter had a beagle in their care who was pregnant when she was brought in off the street. She delivered a litter of puppies in the shelter. Our dog, Frankie, was one of those puppies. Here she is with our youngest daughter, Penny.  You can’t put a price on joy like that.  

Bringing Frankie home has been…challenging. She is a high-energy dog and with five kids to take care of, I don’t have that much extra energy myself. But of course we love her and we love that the kids are continuing to grow up with a dog. Having a pet teaches so much about unconditional love and responsibility. Today I wanted to share a few tips about how to know if your family is ready for a puppy. 

Before bringing a puppy home, be sure to consider: 

It’s Expensive. I didn’t realize that adopting a dog from a shelter costs as much as it does, especially if that dog is a new puppy. Budget several hundred dollars. Then of course you need to add fees for a new license, vaccinations, spaying or neutering, vet visits, etc. 

They are babies. Just like human babies, puppies are fragile and they need constant attention, plus they don’t always sleep through the night. Frankie was only eleven weeks old when we brought her home and the shelter had just had her spayed a few days before. It was very hard to keep five excited kids from picking her up or petting her belly for the first few weeks. And it was even harder to keep a high-energy puppy from jumping or going on steps. I had a full-time job for the first few weeks just chasing the dog around and policing all the kids. 

They come with a lot of stuff. In addition to the adoption fees and medical costs, be sure to budget for a crate, bedding, toys, food, a leash, collar, dog shampoo, flea and tick medication, heart worm medicine, etc. Think about where you are going to put all those things. We ended up converting a closet under our stairwell into a “dog condo.” We’ve also needed to install a baby gate to keep Frankie out of the kids bathroom and bedrooms. 

They need to be trained. Frankie is seven months old now and is getting much better, but she is still a jumper and a barker and a BIG chewer. Plus she still has occasional potty accidents. I feel like training is taking forever. I do work with her every day, and she’s getting better. She can sit and drop something and responds to her name, and she generally goes to the door if she has to potty. We do have her enrolled in a local puppy kindergarten training class. Of course, that is another expense to consider. 

Stuff will get ruined. I did not consider how much more challenging it would be to keep things out of the dog’s reach when there are kids in the house. The last time we adopted a dog Eddie and I were just married and did not have kids. There just wasn’t that much left out for her to get into. But with kids who constantly forget to put away toys or shoes or gloves, etc. I have to admit it’s been a losing battle. Also, be very, very careful with toys that have batteries. We are always nagging the kids to put things away higher or find a different spot. It’s very dangerous if the dog eats one. 

How will the kids help? We haven’t made our kids pick up her poop, but they do let her out in the back yard when she goes to the door and they help to feed her and make sure her water bowl stays full. And it is their job to make sure the living room floor stays clean so that Frankie doesn’t eat anything she shouldn’t.

There are lots of small jobs kids of all ages can do to help take care of a family pet! How do your kids help? 

If you liked this post, please pin or share. You might also like: 

What to Know About Becoming a Foster Family

Like everyone else with a Netflix account, I was enthralled with the show Tidying Up when it was released in January. I have heard of the KonMari method of simplifying your life by only keeping items that “spark joy” but, truth be told, it seemed kind of silly to me until I watched the show. For some reason, it really resonated. I’ve been wanting to simplify for quite a while and have been trying for about a year to make small changes here and there, but I felt very convicted about it this time. I jumped in with both feet and haven’t looked back. 

This method is about finding the things in your life that bring you a sense of peace and letting go of stuff that is only adding to the chaos. Plus being grateful for what you have. It’s the gratitude aspect that resonated with me the most. I love the idea of clearing out all of the excess so we can breathe, having more free time, more money, and instilling a deeper sense of gratitude and pride of ownership in our kids. 

Minimalism is a huge lifestyle change and it won’t happen overnight. This post is long because there is so much to share! I’ve been slowly working toward this change for several months, but I was overwhelmed and not really sure how to do it with 5 school-aged kids who all have their own opinions about their toys and clothes. This is where KonMari has been a big help for me. I really am enjoying having an outline of exactly how to proceed. We’ve been slowly decluttering over the past year, but going about downsizing in a more organized way following the KonMari method for about a month. 

Am I finished? Not even close. I’ve done several areas of our home, but I expect this process to take a minimum of six more months before we’ve completed most of the steps. I wanted to show you everything I was able to accomplish in the first 30 days.  [Read more…]

We are continuing our series of homemade holiday gifts with something else you can make from yarn: a crocheted ponytail hat. 

Be sure to also check out how to make felted wool dryer balls. They are a great project to do with kids! 

This crocheted hat is perfect for beginners because you only need to know very basic stitches. I am not by any means a master crocheter (I only know how to do a chain stitch, a single crochet, and a double crochet), and I made several of these hats very easily. Each one took me about two hours. 

[Read more…]

Fun fact about me: I love pickled onions. Whenever I go our to a restaurant like Panera Bread where I know they are available, I ask to add them to my salad. I also love reducing food waste (good for your wallet and the environment), and this salad is a great way to do that! 

We had a red onion sitting on the counter that I bought but then had no real plans to use. It just wasn’t showing up in any recipes and most people in our family don’t like regular raw onion, so it sat there for weeks. Rather than throw it out as it started to age, I decided to learn to pickle it myself. 

[Read more…]