Time to Simplify: De-Clutter

I don't usually do new years resolutions...I think I might have said that here before. This year though, I feel pretty strongly that I need to simplify things around here. There are MANY, MANY reasons why I want to do this...here are just a few:

- I feel a leading from the Lord to do it
- it will give me less to manage/keep track of/clean/find a spot for, etc. which will in turn free up more time to spend taking care of my family and hopefully make me a better follower of Jesus, wife, mom, family member, friend, etc.
- We have many things around the house that we are no longer using and I'd love to find homes for these things where they will be used. If we can get a few extra bucks in the process, it's a bonus!!
- When we purchased this house, one of the things I liked about it was that it didn't have oodles of excess storage space. Now that we have BabyBear outgrowing things like car seats, swings, clothes, etc. We need places to put those things that we aren't ready to part with...we need to make room.

Now, don't get me wrong...we have been very, very richly blessed and I don't want to sound ungrateful at all. That's not what this is about. In looking around, I'm realizing we really don't need two baby carriers, or two inflatable nursing pillows or the cell phone I'm no longer using or the movies we won't be watching anymore now that we have a little one in the house (I never noticed violence in movies until lately!), etc. So rather than look at it, walk away, find it again in a few months, walk away, I'm looking at it and now doing something about it. Ebay, Craigslist and Freecycle are working for me at the moment. We've already found a thankful home for most of the boatload of paint that was in the garage (we inherited it with the house), sold an extra chair we had in the living room, and have a few listings going on eBay right now. No worries, I'm getting clearance with the Hubs before getting rid of anything to make sure he's ok with it.

There are a few other parts to this overall goal of simplifying that I'm taking baby steps towards, but this one is one I've been putting off since the year started and thanks to Amy at New Nostalgia, I'm finally doing something about it. Thanks Amy!

PS- I couldn't find a good picture for this post, so I'm just including a bonus shot of BabyBear :)