Just to Claireify

healthy food, lifestyle, travel, & everyday moments.

Beyond Stuff: Eliminating Clutter Hotspots from the Home

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eliminating-clutter-hotspots-title-imageHappy December, friends! Can you believe it’s the last month of 2024? This year absolutely flew by for us–pregnancy and election notwithstanding–and I’ve just about wrapped up my holiday shopping 🙂 I’m ready to settle in for a month of festivities with (ideally) low stress and Christmas to-do’s.

Speaking of the holidays… another project I’m working on at the moment is our pre-Christmas decluttering. With four kids, generous grandparents and extended family, holiday craft projects from school and two winter birthdays after the holidays, things can get seriously messy in our house during the winter.… Read More »

Living a Balanced Life: Make It Do…

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Use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without. I’m very into the idea of cutting back lately. Not just in the obvious ways (buy what’s on sale! Ask around for hand-me-downs!) but also questioning what I feel like I/we NEED to buy for one reason or another.

When I was little, my mom was quite frugal. Not because my family was struggling, thankfully, but because my parents were good stewards of their money to save for what was important to them: funding our college accounts, living in a suburb with well-ranked schools, traveling to Europe every two years.… Read More »

Living a Balanced Life: Use It Up, Wear It Out…

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…Make it do or do without. I am full of inspiration to be thriftier and in the process more eco-friendly, as I’m reading a wonderful book right now called The Simple Home.

We cook (mostly) from scratch, take hand-me-downs, use up our food stores/art supplies/toiletries etc, and try to buy sales for everything from food to clothing to home improvement items. But there are many ways we could live a more frugal life and make better use of the money and resources available to us.… Read More »

Social Media Burnout in Motherhood

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A Mr. 2-year-old project last week: sorting his toy cars by the ones that do go down the car ramp, and the ones that don’t.

I am burned out, friends–burned out on social media.

I’ve written so much before about social media on the blog. A lot of that came from the vague feeling, pre-kids, that in my romanticized traditional world, we wouldn’t have to meet our social needs online; we’d have vibrant real lives, busy lives full of family and friends and support.… Read More »

A Decluttering Journey: The First 100 Items

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I recently read two books that inspired me to tackle the clutter around our house in a thorough, maintain-able way.

The first was The Gentle Art of Swedish Death Cleaning. Now, I’m not planning on dying anytime soon, but in the book, she writes that you shouldn’t wait until you’re contemplating death to part with the things that aren’t serving you. Maybe you’re undergoing another life change like divorce, downsizing, or (in our case) contemplating an international move. Whatever the case, life is lighter and freer without the unused excess.

The other book was The Day the World Stops Shopping. It is a fantastic read that inspired significant personal reflection for me and my relation to things. It feels like a foundational book for anti-consumerism in the same way that The Omnivore’s Dilemma or In Defense of Food were foundational books for the anti-big ag/sustainable ag movements.… Read More »

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