Let's Play (January 20th Recap)

On my first day of The Minimalist Game I was beginning on the 19th and was attempting to play catch up to the necessary total. The grand total for 30 days is 465 by my reckoning. So By the 19th I had figured I needed 190 fewer things in my house. At 127 I came short, so on my second day I needed to make up the rest, plus the 20 items for the 20th. I needed at least 83 more things. Lets see how I did.

3 pair of leggings (donated)
9 more bathroom products (SERIOUSLY?)
1 hairstick (meh. trash)
1 baby teether (trash)
6 bags of glass marbles (Donated)
3 funny crabs (trash)
2 mini jewelry boxes (trash)
1 pair of holey gloves (trash)
21 kitchen drawer things (donate)
2 salt and paper shakers (donate)
11 kitchen cabinet things (various demises)
29 baby spoons and forks (donate)
1 doll hat (donate)
2 users manuals (recycle)
1 crumpled map (recycle)
1 lego instruction booklet (recycle)
2 wooden shapes (trash)
1 card came with missing cards (recycle)
1 lithium computer battery (Will take to a receptacle for this purpose at the mall)
2 things to return to a young friend

One hundred things on the dot. I didn't even plan that. Honest to Besty (you can swear by Betsy).
So that brought the running total up to 227. 17 over the goal for the day towards the tally for the 21st. And that's how easy it was to catch up to everyone who slow-poked it around all month. We ain't one at a timin' it here.

This crew met the garbage truck this morning from the Purge on the 19th. Cowabunga Raph.

Libby asked me to get rid of these weeks ago (her job is putting away the silverware) I thought there were only a handful in there and told her I wasn't getting rid of them so we'd have some for little guests. Twenty-nine little guests could have eaten here at the same time with all of these in the photo. I still kept six in the drawer.

Extra utensils and prep tools I don't need. Some never came out of the store wrappings since my wedding. Chris and I will celebrate our 14th anniversary in June. The Rolling pin was also a nice wedding gift, but I rarely use it and I have a smaller one and a new one from Williamsburg. Someone who doesn't bake a lot has no business owning 3 rolling pins.

It's just stuff. I liked the garlic roaster a lot, but I can do the same thing in foil or a little glass dish. The sugar bowl Was an heirloom hand me down, but I don't keep it on the counter. Now it's free to become someone else's heirloom. Yes, those are 3-D glasses that came out of my spice cabinet. No, no one my age and health needs that much Metamucil. It expired years ago- unopened right up until I poured out the contents in the compost and recycled the container. (I think I bought it when I was pregnant and worried about keeping regular...). The kid vitamins probably shouldn't count because we used them up like normal and it just happened to be gone while I was doing this declutter. Cheating on that one.

Lost my marbles! I was collecting these for flower arrangements that I never got around to using them in. Seems like a lot of work to clean every time. Ain't nobody got time for that.

More junk.

I'm gonna miss these guys. Gwen used to ask me repeatedly for a hermit crab. I got her these. You could turn them on and they would walk. I would have donated them or re-gifted them but several of the legs had been broken and reglued and they needed new teenie batteries. So I took a picture so they could last longer. I think Gwen still wants a hermit crab that poops real poop.

Let's Play (Jan 19th recap)

I'm still on track with The Game. But I've got some catching up to do as far as documenting it for you.  On the one hand I feel like itemizing all the junk is literally minutia. I may bore you. But The more I think about it the more fascinated I am. Trying to put it into words and pictures reminded me of the scene in the movie "Sneakers" where the con-artist ex-convict protagonists are going through their target's trash to try to learn what kind of man he is and how to get close to him- based on what he throws away.

So really, I feel a little naked here.

The first day I didn't do too many photos because I started late at night when I first came across The Game, and it was too dark and I hadn't really thought about publishing it. I did, however, keep track by jotting things down as I tossed them or put them in the donate piles. I will attempt to transcibe this.

1 old game box (recycled)
6 sorry-lookin' stuffed animals (kids told me they wanted to get rid of them- trashed)
3 hats (donated)
1 pair of pants (donated)
13 VHS tapes (donated)
1 small clock (donated)
2 styluses (donated)
3 books (to go to the free table at LEAH)
1 broken motorized toy (trash)
1 broken Ceramic yarn bowl (trash)
1 wordfind book (recycled)
7 books (Donated to LEAH Library)
1 lots of broken pencils, stubs, and dead pens (trash)
1 three pound bag of old gumballs (trashed)
2 old perfume bottles (trashed)
1 crusty nail polish (trashed)
3 mini shampoos (poured out and recycled)
1 expired lotion (poured out and recycled)
2 expired foundation bottles (trashed)
2 expired homeopathic meds  (trashed)
1 mini chimes (donated)
1 Christmas jewelry pin (trashed)
1 broken pet shop accessory (trashed)
1 mini toy dart board (trashed)
1 wooden rhino shape (trashed)
2 cell cases (donated)
2 unreliable compass bracelets (trashed)
1 baby carrier (NEW! saved for a gift- I'm committed to it leaving soon and know who it's for)
13 cute things in a shoe box (for Rosie and Benji)
3 wooden whistles (donate)
1 holiday serving tray (donate)
1 belt (donate)
1 pencil bag (donate)
1 mini embroidery kit (donate)
1 oversized plastic toy coin, the rest are gone (trashed)
1 well used old toy princess wand (trashed)
6 manila envelopes of art left after shows years ago (To be mailed to the students)
1 stack of seed catalogs I can see online (recycled)
1 unused undated appointment book (donated)
3 mismatched gloves (trashed)
20 more expired bathroom products (trashed/ recycled)
1 oddball basket (donated)
1 cleaned out my purse (trashed/ recycled)
1 sorted reciepts on the desk (recycled)
1 cleaned off my bulletin board (recycled)
4 mesh pop up hampers (donated)
1 skirt (donated)
1 pair of toddler glove clips (donated)
1 handful of old sugar packets (trashed)

So for the 19th, a grand total of: 127 items vanquished.

I'm most ashamed of all the old bathroom products. Honestly I think some were expired when we moved in. Which means I packed expired products, put them in a truck, unpacked them and lived with them in my space for 8 years. Even though I did purge an incredible volume of bathroom products a few years ago, I must have been having guilt about getting rid of some of the nasty lotions in the sink or the trash. I have stopped using nearly all of them and have seriously changed most of my hygiene products over the years to simplify and put less synthetics on my skin. Now I know better what I like and what's better for me (even though I'm not entirely where I want to be in this area yet!)

Second most embarrassing? The student artwork. Although I gave back almost everyone's work in person, some people I don't see that much. I should have taken these to the post office years ago.

Most bizarre? The 3Lb bag of gumballs. It took up important realestate in my headboard hideaway shelf. I had got it because Gwen asked for gumballs and I gave it to her. but she neglected to mention how tiny her new gumball machine toy actually was so the gumballs didn't fit. The bag had been opened and couldn't be returned. I never wanted to give that much sugary gum to the kids. I never threw it out because that seemed wasteful. It entered Limbo. (It was also the first moment I asked myself if I could declutter just this one bag and have made my whole count for The Game....)

Most proud of? The books donated to LEAH. They are ones I enjoyed reading or perusing and I'm excited to share them. Technically they aren't leaving my house though, because as the Librarian for our homeschool chapter, the Library resides in storage bins in my home. However they are all nicely cataloged and contained and putting them in the bins made room on my shelves and will bless others and they technically aren't owned by me any longer. This one counts.

Also proud of the new baby carrier. I had a hand me down one with a broken clip. I was pretty sure that wasn't safe so I asked the company for a new clip. They insisted I mail them the entire old carrier so they could destroy it for safety reasons and mailed me a new one free of cost! I have always had a lot of good experiences with contacting companies about replacing parts of baby equipment. In this case, I ended up not needing the carrier because my baby was enormous and quickly outgrew the carrier. Hopefully my sister will not feed her child whatever miracle grow Robbie must have been drinking when I wasn't looking and she'll get to use it.

I'm taking pride in the cleaned off bulletin board. Why? Because part of the root drive of my decluttering is to cut back on the stuff and simplify my time so I have room to sit and work on some of my art work and story writing, and that bulletin board holds my idea note cards. It's just gotten over busy with other important things. Life insurance policy papers, volunteer schedules, lecture series time tables, business cards for people quoting various home repairs and services. The more I think about it as I write this, I realize this is really representative of my problem. The things I want to do are getting papered over by the pressing things of life. Those pressing things do matter but that board is not their space. They belong in other places. I just have to take the time to create and use those separate systems to make room for the creative pursuits to be seen and contemplated and acted on.

I'm also proud of the broken bowl. Because I made it and my daughter broke it and I kissed her instead of yelling. (well I did have to yell at the people about to run on the shards.... but that's different) Ceramics used to feel to me like things that should be made to keep forever. It's the stuff, though broken, that has been the lasting record of civilizations long past. Now to me they are as impermanent as sketches and the forever thing is what I learned from it and how making or using it impacted me. The concrete thing has become passing compared to the memories and the ideas and the skills it served to provide me. For years I wanted to not yell when my littles broke things, and no matter how hard I tried, I still did. Sometimes I still do, if I forget to breathe first. But it's so much rarer now. What needed to change wasn't my resolve so much as it was my sense of value. And I'm so thankful that God is doing this lasting work in me. I'm glad he lets things break (over and over and over again) so he can make me whole.

My history is in the pot shards. And in the goodwill bins.

The Rules of the Game

This is the second day of my go at The Minimalist Game and if you've read the original challenge you're going to have a few obvious questions for me. Like- why I didn't wait until the first of the coming month to start?

I am an impulsive person. If I wait, I'll either lose the impulse or follow another one. Best to start now. But it was the night of January 19th when I ran across the Game while on a Pinterest bender, so I'm going to have to modify the rules just a tad. I decided I would play catch up. After all, there is less to axe in the first two-thirds of the month than in the last ten days combined. Another option would have been to start with 19 things on the 19th, 20 on the 20th ... 31 on the 31st, then go back to 1 object on the 1st of the new month, and go through until the 18th of the following month. OR I could have just assigned it the 1st day of my challenge and ignored the calendar numbers, just adding an extra item to each daily tally the next day.

So that's not any big deal then to start any day at all.

I also decided not to wait to convince a friend, which was another core rule of the challenge. Friends are fickle. I know this because I am a friend and am often fickle. True story. So instead, the world is my friend. I challenge you all to a duel! I can take you.

Also, there are some subjective issues to consider when it comes to counting. Right away my lazy brain wanted to count every marble in the donate pile, every broken pencil, every old bent pushpin. I decided to not check out of the challenge so soon though and opt to categorize those things as one (per day. If I get rid of another handful of busted pencils today that will not count with yesterday's batch) or score a few points if there were really a lot of them taking a significant amount of space. But at the same time I decided that things with a lid still counted for one. So far. We'll see how desperate I get in the last couple days. I have already made a couple exceptions and counted all the things in certain groups, but if I explain them in later posts I think you may agree.

If I was a student and only had my car and room to clean, I might count every gum wrapper and each sticky Canadian nickel. But I'm a home maker, so my purview is bigger. I'm not counting up all the trashiest trash. I did however count the ceramic bowl my daughter broke. Serendipity, I thought as I added it to the tally. I decided that cleaning the trash out of certain subject areas would have a score. Cleaning my purse out was one item for instance. I also gave myself a small head start by including a few significant specific things I recalled donating or trashing in the past couple of days. I was after all, giving myself only 10 days out of the 30 to do for the entire month of January. It seemed reasonable. Since last night, I am writing down a general list of what was gotten rid of and today I'm taking a few photos for the next blog post.

I'm going to allow things to count ahead towards the following days' tallies. It doesn't make sense for me to stop when I'm on a roll just because of a number, and I'm likely to have a couple days when the kids aren't going to let me play my game. Anticipating that will keep me from failure.

The rules on the website also say that it has to be out of your house. I'm not going to want to make daily trips to the donation centers, so I'm going to be satisfied with them being in the donation boxes and bags by the door or in my car's trunk. I am pretty good about not going back in the bags to rescue things now.

Instead of quitting by midnight, I will consider nights where I'm up late decluttering to be the same day. Midnight seems arbitrary.

I'm not selling anything. Selling makes me get hung up on the price of the stuff and keeps me from being free of it. My options are trash, give, or donate.

Lastly, I'm not getting rid of other-people's-stuff. Not without their permission at least. Unless they are preschoolers, deceased, or forgot their stuff at my house and have not come to claim it.

I am playing the game, I am getting rid of the same number of things, but I'm not getting hamstrung by the rules. The rules were meant to be modified! You decide how much of a challenge you want it to be. How much of your living space and sanity do you really want back? If you don't want to feel the burn, leave the junk drawer the way it is, throw out a box of 500 count paper clips and tell me you won.

Since I'm doing the 30 Day Game in just 10 days, you get to watch and prepare yourself for a more well paced month. I'll see you in February unless you get creative with the rules like me and start sooner.

The 30 Day Minimalist Challenge

The Minimalist Game

Go ahead and click on the above link to read the rules first. It's short. I'll wait.

So, I'm doing it. Because it looked like fun and I'm a bit odd like that. Or sad I guess- I declutter for a boost of happy brain serum. It floats my boat lately, friends. Be careful because when I run out of things to get rid of, I may come to your house. You think that sounds nice, until I start forcing you to make decisions and you start crying and swear to disown me AND unfriend me from facebook. Oh yeah. This is intense.

We have too many things. Most the world has too little. Still, in an apparent contradiction, a lot of poor people also have too much junk. In fact it's very easy in the modern world to get buried in clutter and be out of work or under employed. So that's a weird double whammy. A triple because it's also pretty cheap and relatively easy to eat empty of nutrient caloric rich food when you're not accessing your own kitchen and pantry and in conscious control of what you buy because of a penny savings mindset. So you're poor, cluttered, and your health is shot. There is a sweet spot in there someplace where less is more AND more is less. Less stuff means more space. More space is less constricting. Less stuff means more time free from shuffling it, searching for things, and caring for them. Less stuff is actually more cash in the bank.

That last one was hard for me to get for a while. I saved every thing just in case. Every scrap of foil, every used spaghetti sauce jar every shirt with a stain on it, every 5 year old pair of sneakers, every outdated map that might be used for a collage I had no present intention to make, every scrap of used tissue paper that could be in another gift. Some of it was useful, so that reinforced my behaviors across the board and made it hard to be more discerning. I was a child of the 90's public school push to Reduce, Reuse, Recycle! Captain Planet, baby. So throwing anything away, even if it was unavoidable, amounted to a check in the guilt tally. I'm not defenestrating my ecological conscience, but I am starting to have some respect for my home. If it's trash, keeping it in my house just delays the ineveitable and turns my home into a dump too. There are better solutions that can resolve the conscience and the clutter problem. I can win-win all over the place.

I wasn't hoarders level ever, but that was because a great deal of my life was spent shuffling the stuff to keep it half decent and bug free. But I wasn't using it, so my time was wasted. Also, if you calculate your square footage out and price it foot by foot and divide up your rent or home value price down to the square foot, you quickly realize you don't own anything worth the space it takes up. Quickly you realize that everything, not just food and toilet paper, is consumable goods, and everything wastes away and needs replaced, even if that's eventually.

Getting things in bulk or on sale to use later are great cost savings strategies, but you also need to factor in- Where will I keep it? Do I have to buy a shelf or an extra fridge or a shed to store it? When will I use it by? Will I get tired of it? Will it expire? Will it quickly go out of style? How much am I willing to live with it in my space? If I really need it, how often will I need it? Can I borrow one instead? Can I bite the bullet and give it away when I'm done? What will be it's ultimate fate when I'm done with it and can I live with that? You ask yourself a lot more questions than just unit price. Sometimes this all amounts to a different kind of cost level not reflected in the price tag. Sometimes the store is the best place to store your stuff and get to it when you want it rather than "paying" the price of having it around every day.

Maybe that is me being in my mid thirties talking now. In my 20's I was just learning to keep my own house and I didn't have a lot of perspective on the value of my space, the value of my time, and even the price of sanity and emotional willpower. I was worried about physical resources or money (both important) while I had no way to account for these other resources. Time management just sounded to me like putting something on the calendar and making a to-do list which are both primary and awesome tools- but not the core of time-management!

Anyways, that was a long detour.

Stay tuned for an update of my 30 day Minimalist Game.

Prioritizing

How do you do it all?

As a mother of five little ones I hear this often. I know most of the time that it's just a rhetorical expression of awe, and not really a genuine inquiry into my secrets.

But here you are reading my blog so I'm going to deal you the nitty gritty.

One thing that does help me get through my day the more I employ it is a sort of blend of prioritizing and self-forgiveness. By this I mean I decide based on my larger family life vision and my more immediate day's demands what today's primary goals are and what their secondary goals are.

Some times I list these out on a scrap of paper (most of my lists begin with something like FIGHT ENTROPY which is my personal irorny, but all things are possible through Christ who strengthens me!). Some times I don't get around to a list and sort of feel my way through the day, but the principle of the priorities is still at work whether I write them down or not.

One day's priorities might basically be- Personal Devotions, Dinner, Basic House Chores, Make Cards for Sick Person, Read and Color with kids, School Studies, Plant Cucumbers, Clean Fridge, Reorganize Girls Closet

Because these are in order of priority, it doesn't matter if I only get the first 2 or 3 done, because those will be the most important. As the child care permits me, I can work further down my priorities and accomplish more.

But grace comes into the picture when I really never complete any of my lists and the lesser things (which are still meaningful and important, but just not as pressing and often not life makers/ breakers) roll over to the next day until they are gotten around to, or until they are a higher priority because they must be done or because they haven't been done often enough in a while. But I don't have to feel obligated to do everything everyday, and I don't need to make an impossible list for myself even if one or two very large tasks make the list for the day, just in case that particular day provides me some real achievement opportunity (such as my sister Rachel coming over to help unexpectedly!).

I use somewhat of the same priority system to go food shopping with all the kids by myself. First, I release myself from the cooking for the day, by putting dinner in the crockpot or declaring a leftover night, and by making our shopping trip start out with lunch out. Then I structure my list by the most important items by store department that we absolutely can't leave without. If these 4 or 5 items are all i can get before we have trouble with the little guys, then we can check out and it has been a sucessful trip! If everyone is still good then we can get to the next most important items on the list and so on. At any stage if we have to check out and go, we have done well.

(links to Amazon)

This also works for our school day. If I cover the primary subjects and/ or ones that need more time put in because they were set aside before, we can more than keep up just by prioritizing our subjects. I still haven't got this perfectly worked out, but since next year I will have 2 grade schoolers, I think I will need to flesh it out more. I think one of the things I'm realizing is that our first subject for the day needs to be Bible or Devotional time. A brief one that's also accessible to the preschoolers.

Also, God is convicting me about my late night habits (again) I told him I'm loathe to go to bed earlier because I love my quiet time to myself in the evenings. But He doesn't want me to be anxious for anything and I feel convicted that if I would just trust Him and rest more He would make the waking hours more than enough for me. We talk a lot about trusting God to provide us with our daily bread in terms of our means, and time is as much a resource as anything else! So I'm going to practice not being anxious for it.

So how do you do it all?

Creative Order

Okay, so I'm a very creative type of person. For much of my life I refused tothink of myself as someone who could be orderly. But as I've grown in my understanding of God I'm coming to see that He is both the ultimate personification of Creativity and Order all at once, without conflicting Himself at all! Realizing this, I'm free to stop putting myself in a certain 'camp' and come to see that I can have it both ways. Really.


So, on order in the home, I think the first thing to realize after the nature of God is that our homes should be places of purpose where we live by intention. Not by default and not just because, well, we need a place to sleep. When your home has a mission or a set of goals-- a vision-- you will be able to better see what you need to achieve those things. If you have a Christian household, then your first goal is like mine: to live in service to God (and all of the unique specifics will spring from this one.)


The next thing to come to grips with is that life is a process of growing and changing. We have dynamic lives and dynamic families with many changing variables. Our pursuits will change, our families will grow as we welcome new members (each with their own growth spans and changes!), shrink as we see brothers and sisters start their own households, Grow to admit our parents or family or friends in need, and, if a powerhouse of faith, will include large and/ or long term hospitality and home industry. Through all of these different demands, our homes will need to shift in structure physically and in management in terms of supply and time spent. For me this means just when I get a grip on things the tiger is only gotten by the tail and I have to whip around and begin again! But that's okay. Order is basically problem solving which is really creative thought. Everyone is a creation of God in His image and so long as we are healthy in our minds we can all problem solve to one degree or another.


While our households are filled with little lambs, we need to give ourselves some grace. Most gifted mothers I have heard speak or whose writings I've read testify to not recalling much of the years of being up at night nursing and wading through the dirty laundry. This. Is. Normal. While we are in these years we can still do our best, but it's unreasonable to expect magazine homes or polished children singing in three part harmony ala sound of music. When we give ourselves grace we will enjoy the sticky fingers, ant farms, cardboard box houses, and the ballpoint pen wall murals. Childhood will only pass this way once and they need us to be peaceful and loving (which doesn't mean without discipline, but that's another topic). Use this time to learn the nature of God's patience, long-suffering, and gentleness and keep this time in your heart to treasure always.


I can't yet speak to having older children as mine are all well under ten. But I can say that at about age five or six the average child begins to be able to care for himself. He takes himself to the bathroom, feeds himself and cleans off his plate, ties his own shoes and can do some beginning self-care chores (making his bed, putting away his clothes, picking up his toys). By this age he can also begin to entertain his younger siblings and this begins to allow your arms to be more free to prepare a meal or... um, write a blog post like this one.

Once children can be at least a little autonomous, you have fewer excuses for letting the floor go a month between moppings. It's time to begin to regiment yourself to keep up with these types of tasks. And, I'm hoping this will lead to these types of chores being something I can train the oldest to do on request or by a schedule so my life is even more free in the next few years.


On Clutter-- It happens. Rather than letting it frustrate you and make you a meanie or a despondent individual, it's better to evaluate the clutter as you continuously work through it. Keep the broken and nonsensical things weeded out into the trash so they don't keep you and your family from enjoying the things that are more worthwhile (but respect even the broken things of other people. help them consider what to do with their own things and remember that they can learn how to evaluate in time too). As you sort your things, consider if there are better ways of storing or distributing the things.


Because I have many preschoolers, I came to realize that having everything where they could reach was just a bad idea. They are too little to resist pulling everything out and too little to be able to sort through and pick up things. So I put up most of the art supplies and games and toy sets, and they can have them one at a time by request. These play things will last them thirty minutes or up to two hours of play and then it is time to put them away. Because they only have one thing out it's easy to pick up and there are no tears. Of course I still have many things where they can reach freely and these things can pile up on our floors. Our play kitchen, stuffed animals, doll houses, 'guys box', legos, duplos, wooden blocks, dress up box, kids books, and crayons and paper are certainly more than enough to chase around our house!


When I was a kid, my dad had this thing he started saying that I didn't really appreciate at the time. He would say to just pick up three things every time you went through a room on your way somewhere else. I have to say this really works! There's no extra effort involved other than on the part of your brain, and even that becomes more automatic as you make it a habit. So if the phone rings right now (I always wait for the answering machine and screen my calls) I will grab my dirty clothes and the kids books and two baby toys that I see right now in my room and take them downstairs with me. It didn't clean up my whole room, but it certainly helps keep it more manageable.


Something someone said at our homeschool ladies luncheon this summer was really helpful to me for envisioning order in my home, particularly because I'm a bit of a pack rat. She said everything we keep should have a purpose, and if it's not serving that purpose it becomes deadweight around our ankles, preventing us from serving the Lord with all we have. This was fantastic! My home is a base of operations. I'm free to collect newspapers and glass jars and ribbon ends and odd bangles- if they have a purpose. If they begin to sit without use or even a plan , then it's time to let go and make room for something we are using. I started looking at my stuff and saying, use it or lose it! This has meant that I'm doing a lot of projects I put off, donating things to others.... or filling up my recycle bin very quickly! It also has made me look at my accessibility to my storage and I now have some plans in mind for how to make them more accessible so I'll use the collections I have of say, fabric, instead of just buying more because it's easier to reach the store's bolts than my own!


My home is still very far from perfect, but it is far better than it has been in the past, and I feel able to breathe and to do good in my home for my children, and by little bits, for my extended family and community. If you get a vision for what you want to do with your home in the next few years, you can begin to prioritize how to improve on it and what to keep in it and the resources God gives us for this time will cease to be a stagnant waste and begin to be as good as gold! Right now we are gaining the value of education from our home as we teach our own children and improve our own skills. Chris gets a small additional income editing video for his brother's business from his home computer. Soon I look forward to making salable art work and crafts from home and eventually I will also be feeding us in part from our garden (right now my garden is more of a... test bed). These are manageable near future goals. We have bigger longer term ones too, and God-willing, we'll be striving for those soon enough! You may have different specifics and different gifts and applications. But essentially, it's my hope that in not too long, our house will produce more than it consumes, multiply in charity, train little hands and minds to work diligently and equip them to set out with strong households, and if at all possible for our home to help other families to do the same.


Thank you for reading and I hope this makes some sense and helps someone else in big and small ways! Keep God always at the focus, let Him work in you through Scripture and through the Holy Spirit and through consideration of encouragements and chastisements of other believers, and everything will come into place in His time! Glory to God.


(and now it's time to get back to feeding the lambs!)