This is a very happy place. I’m sitting at a picnic table while Pete builds a fire, Sam rests in the camper, and Ella cuts grass with her child-size scissors, which she’s very enthusiastic about. The smell of campfire is one of my absolutely favorite scents. I wish I could trap it in a bottle and open it in my house while I wrap up on a chilly day with a cup of coffee and an enticing book. I know they have candles that attempt to replicate the scent, but we all know it’s just not the same. And I don’t have a wood burning fire place. Instead, I’ll store away the memory of it right now and save it for late fall. Mmmm.
Tuesday we made the short, 45-minute drive to join my parents at one of their favorite state parks. We set up camp and then sat back to relax in the warm, fresh air.
Sam is just the right size to sit in one of Grandpa & Grandpa’s camping chairs. Ella was bursting to share all her newest stories with a captive audience.
We went on a couple hikes, which this guy loves.
Becky and her girls joined us on Wednesday morning and we took a hike out to the lake.
We’ve had campfire meals, hot chocolate, more smores than we can count, and two bee stings. Fortunately they were on me, not the kids. I discovered a hive while playing Frisbee last night. I’m not allergic, so all was okay. This morning we woke to sunny skies and big appetites.
We’re about to pack up and head home. We always wish we could stay longer. We have a date planned tonight before Pete heads into a pretty intense week of work. We’re looking ahead to plan our next camping adventure!
Happy Friday! Today I’m taking the kiddos to Pete’s parents’ house for a few days, which we love. It always feels like such a vacation! We’re going to have some downsizing/house/what’s next news to share next week, so be sure to check back! Have a lovely weekend!
Photo Friday is a little glimpse at our week in pictures. To see more, follow TheMangoMemoirs on Instagram!
Remember our beloved Beatrice? We introduced her last fall on our previous blog in this post. We had such beautiful dreams for her…remodeling the inside and decorating with vintage Lake Superior decor, painting her exterior powder blue, and pulling her to picturesque camping locations throughout the north. It was something I had dreamed of doing for years, and I was thrilled when we found her for dirt cheap on craigslist.
Alas, our lovely Beatrice was not to be. She sat in storage throughout the long winter and her work was to began in mid-spring. However, when the RV experts had a good look at her, they came back with two options. The first was to rebuild the roof and multiple other parts, with a price take of many thousands of dollars. The other option? Let her rest. In the end, we found a nice home for her with a gentleman who will be using her as a hunting shack. It took me a while to part with the idea of remodeling her. I had pretty fantastic plans and imagined us pulling into a campground and being the talk of the place. We’d roll out our stripped awning and set out our chairs under a string of bare lights. Honestly, letting go of her hurt.
Even with the change of plans, we didn’t want to give up the idea of camping altogether, so we searched craigslist again, and found a perfect little pop-up camper in Minneapolis that fits us beautifully. And guess what? She doesn’t need any work. We immediately brought her home, set her up in the driveway, and camped our first night in her. A week later, we tried her out for real at a wooded, quiet campground only about 30 minutes from home. This little guy has decided he likes camping!
Ella has loved camping, too, introducing herself to every person around us. This girl is all about new adventures.
Camping food always tastes amazing. We did all our cooking on our stove that can be inside or outside. We opted for outside. Maybe that’s what makes it taste so good.
Ella is really into games since turning five, which is a lovely fit for camping. High Ho Cherry-O, anyone?
Her daddy is already teaching her the ways of fire. Look out.
Did I mention that Ella insisted on naming this camper Beatrice as well? She was quite disappointed about not getting to paint this camper, as we had told her we would do with the first Beatrice. After listening to her sadness, I gently asked if she would like to keep the name for the new camper. That somehow made everything okay. And now, after taking Beatrice and Ella on an in-the-woods camping trip, the two have bonded beautifully.
We’ll be out with Beatrice again next week, and this time, we’ll be camping alongside Grandma & Grandpa Scott! We can’t wait!
As we continue making progress toward our estate sale (details here), I’ve taken a little time to process what I’m learning about freeing myself from so much of my material stuff. Perhaps you’ll find this list helpful, too.
1. Know your reasons.
Why do you want to simplify? Is it so you don’t have to spend so much time keeping things organized? Are you preparing for a life change like a move or a new baby? Whatever your reason, it’s just that…yours. Don’t worry what it might look like to someone else. Just make sure you’ve thought it through. If you need to, write it down. That way you can remind yourself why you’re doing the work if you lose your motivation.
2. Find a cause.
What are you going to do with the stuff you’re purging? I suggest finding a great cause that you want to support by donating your items. Maybe it’s a local shelter, a church rummage sale, or your own sale to start a long-awaited vacation fund. Having a cause makes it far easier to part with things. If you’re donating to larger second-hand stores, I recommend looking into how they do as a company. Some chains don’t have the best policies. (Have you heard the Goodwill low-wage controversy for disabled employees? You can watch the NBC Rock Center report here and read about it on Forbes.com right here.) We try to stick to local organizations that help people in our immediate community.
3. Cut out distractions.
What are the things that are keeping you from making progress on your simplifying? Are you allowing enough time to get through each section? Are you constantly having little hands pull things out of boxes and demand they are absolutely in love with the toy they haven’t touched in a year? It’s important to strategize how to work around any distractions. Send the kids to grandma’s for the day (or the whole weekend!), turn off the phone, reschedule lunch dates, or leave your front curtains closed so no one stops in for an unannounced visit.
4. Move space by space.
Instead of trying to tackle your entire house in one fell swoop, take it space by space. It feels far less daunting and will give you a sense of accomplishment as you finish each area. It definitely helps prevent burnout, which you don’t want to hit if your entire house is a reorganization mess.
5. Use good boxes.
This may seem trivial, but I’ve found it can help in ways I hadn’t imagined. Using good, strong boxes helps the actual simplification process by encouraging you to keep your mind set on organizing. They can also keep things looking tidy, which helps prevent burnout on bigger jobs, especially if it will take more than one day to finish the space. Personally, nice boxes have helped me part with my nicer things simply because I wasn’t putting them in junky containers. In the end, it’s important to plan your boxes appropriately for transport. How much help will you have to move everything? What size vehicle will you be using? Big boxes may hold a lot, but they get heavy quickly and need more space in a car. (The boxes I’ve purchased for every move since we got married and now to prepare for our estate sale came from Sam’s Club. They have various sizes, but these are my favorite. They can be flattened, stored, and used again for future projects.)
6. Take pictures.
It’s hard to part with old tennis trophies, letter jackets, camp t-shirts, and other items that hold sentimental value, but are they really serving a purpose in an old box in the attic or hanging in the back of a closet? Instead of allowing such physical items to take up valuable space in our homes or even in our minds, take a picture of it and give yourself permission to part ways. Collect all your photos and put them together in an inexpensive photo book. Keep the book on a shelf and share it with friends or flip through it when you’re feeling nostalgic. After all, we’re usually more connected with the memories tied to an item than to the item itself.
7. Consider the emotional attachment you have with the item.
It can be hard to part with items that have some kind of connection with us. Was it a wedding or birthday gift? Did you get it at a special time in your life? Is it something you once loved and poured your time into? When simplifying, emotions can run wild, especially feelings of guilt for wanting to part with something “special.” One thing I constantly remind myself is that there are seasons of life and seasons come and go. We don’t need to hold on to the things that once brought us joy if they no longer do. And yes, that includes gifts. Do you think the giver of that gift would want you to have it if it no longer fits your purposes? This part of the process is probably the hardest, which is also why it’s so important to already have selected a great cause for your donations. If you know the set of mixing bowls your aunt gave you for your wedding shower will be going to your church’s kitchen, it will probably be easier to say goodbye to it.
Another note on guilt. I used to have time for lots of projects like sewing, baking, jewelry making, stamping, painting, etc., but I no longer have that time. At the moment, I want to be with my family and prepare for our future. I’ve allowed all of my project supplies to throw feelings of guilt over me for no longer putting them to use. It’s the same for a number of books on my shelf that I know I will never make time to read. Instead of continuing to allow these things to influence my emotions, I’ve boxed them up and will be selling them. I don’t want to give material things that kind of power over me, so I’m tossing out the guilt.
8. Take breaks but not too many.
Purging our things is an emotional event. Be sure to take time to break from it if you start to feel stressed. Watch a short episode of a light show on Netflix, go for a walk, have a cup of coffee. Let your mind rest. But don’t make your break too long or take too many. You might lose good momentum or end your work altogether.
9. Finish the job.
Finish what you’ve started. Complete each space to your liking and then get the boxes out of your house. If the boxes don’t leave, you may be tempted to start pulling things out again or the boxes might end up feeling like more clutter. You worked hard to get rid of stuff, so work just a bit harder and finish well.
10. Give yourself grace.
Simplifying is not easy. We live in a society that tells us we should have more, keep buying, continue to increase. We have emotional attachments to most of our material possessions. If you feel like you need a break, take one. If you want to hold on something just a little while longer, do it. If you get stuck, be gentle with yourself and ask a friend to join you. Sometimes an outside perspective is all it takes to keep moving forward. Remember, this is your life, these are your things, and you might need time to process it all. Praying helps tremendously. Do it before you begin, when you’re in the middle, and then again when you feel like you’ve finished. Speaking from lots of experience, God has a way of meeting us, with all of our wild emotions, right where we are, even with something as seemingly unimportant as simplifying. He never intended that our material possessions have a stronghold on us.
It really is amazing to feel a bit lighter by simply letting go of a few…or a lot…of our possessions. I’d love to hear about your own experiences and what you’ve found has worked well for you!
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A note on our own progress. We’ve nearly finished! We’ve gone through the house top to bottom. Now I’ve taken over for the small jobs like cleaning out the filing cabinet and refiling newer papers. We met with an estate sale company this week who say they will be able to hold a sale for us at the end of August. We’re working out the details, but we’re so happy to have a timeline! We plan to either go camping during the time of the sale or stay in a hotel. Something fun to separate ourselves from the sale. I’m glad our things will be going, but I don’t need to know who is buying each item. I’ve already said my goodbyes. And yes, I’ve taken plenty of pictures of our memories!
The week has continued with a bit of organizing, lots of praying about our next steps as a family, and plenty of giggles from the two youngest of the house. I’m working on an organizing tips post for tomorrow, so in the meantime, here is the return of Photo Friday. Have a great weekend, friends!
A little more than four years ago, Pete suggested we go through a few of our things before moving from our two-bedroom apartment in Minneapolis to our three-bedroom-plus-lots-of-storage-space house in Duluth. I agreed it might be a good idea and worked alongside him as we opened boxes we hadn’t touched the entire year we had been in that apartment. We laughed and shared memories from our high school year books and summer camp photo albums, put on old sports jerseys and a shirt I sewed in college. Many things went back into boxes, while we were satisfied to simply take pictures of other items instead of continuing to actually move them from house to house. The boxes took days for me to sort. I felt emotionally tied to everything held in those cardboard containers. Pete encouraged me to do as much donating, photo-taking, or tossing as I could manage. When the movers arrived a few weeks later and said we had noticeably downsized since the move twelve month earlier, I was proud. I had parted with enough items to feel we were going to begin a touch lighter on Lake Superior.
We settled into our new house and, well, you know what happens when living comfortably in one place for an extended period of time. Kids grow through multiple sizes of clothing, they collect toys and games and mountains of books. As a family we gather tools and trinkets, kitchen gadgets and hobby supplies. Furniture moves in and collections of all sorts grow. After being in our cozy house for three-and-a-half years, I started to feel I needed a change. Not huge, but a little organization was definitely going to be necessary. So last winter I started reading blogs on how to get organized, I put together a Pinterest board, and I found an inspiring book that helped me feel like I could get things in order. I was tired of constantly putting things away and spending valuable time apart from my kids while trying to make my house look nice. Looking back now, I see that my need to organize was only the beginning of something deeper.
After spending weeks attempting to get my house in order, I still felt like it was out of control. If only I could get it organized and keep it that way! It felt like an impossible task, though just months earlier I had very little trouble with it. I realized that I was spending just as much time before the big organization binge trying to keep things neat. And it was starting to get to me. I began to feel anxious looking at the baskets of toys and piles of clothes surrounding me. I felt guilty knowing I had boxes of untouched craft supplies and unfinished house projects that I couldn’t seem to find time to squeeze in.
And then, two or three weeks ago, I started to feel an urge to separate myself from all the material stuff around me. I brought it up to Pete, who has always desired to live fairly minimally, by asking if we could get a dumpster for a week or two. (Can I tell you how happy he seemed with that question?!) We couldn’t start right away, though, because I was working on my sister’s wedding. While waiting the couple weeks until the wedding, we got to pray a lot about what exactly God was doing in my heart. We both felt that this wouldn’t just be another organizing stint. This would be much, much more.
We’ve known for years that we would have an estate sale before our big move to Africa. We don’t want to put piles of our things in storage and not have them used for years at a time. We still have a year or two before that move, though, so imagine our surprise when we strongly felt God telling us to prepare for the estate sale NOW. What?! That doesn’t make any sense! But we couldn’t shake the thought. I felt like the sale was confirmed in the fact that I got really excited about it. Such a change from my sorting in Minneapolis when I emotionally could not part from more than a few items. By the time we were able to start last Monday morning, I was actually giddy. All I can say is that was not from my own will. I have always loved my stuff and wouldn’t even consider tossing or selling something that I might be able to use in the next couple years. I know that God is preparing our hearts for Africa, but the timing of this is not at all what I expected.
I’ve had a few friends ask, “But an estate sale means you sell everything in your house, right? Why would you do that already?” My answer: yes, and we don’t exactly know yet. We do hope to sell nearly everything. If you see it in our house, it will likely be for sale. Book cases, books, dishes, pictures, bedding, toys…everything. We’re not leaving for another 18-24 months, so we’re praying about how this will play out. We may use the opportunity to clear our belongings and put the money toward a few items that we need and will really use. God has revealed a few details that we will share when the time is right, but for now, we’re trying to listen carefully to what God has for us. We know that His plan and purposes are so much better than our own. And that makes me incredibly excited.
I usually consider Jeremiah 29:11 far overused and fairly cliche, but I’m trusting what this verse says right now. “I know the plans I have for you,” declares the Lord. “Plans to prosper you and not to harm you, plans to give you hope and a future.” We already believe with our entire beings that God has a great plan for our family. I absolutely trust that this place God has called us to – living minimally – will not harm us, but that it will bring us peace and that it will draw us closer to Him. And the prospering part? I’ve felt deeply that God is freeing me from the guilt and busyness of my material possessions so that I can embrace each moment with my beautiful family. Ella will love having more of my undivided attention before and after school when she begins kindergarten in September. Sam will thrive when we’re able to have more of our day together to do fun and developmental activities. Pete will be able to rest in our home after stressful shifts in the ER and I can be more of the attentive wife I know I was created to be. And for me? I will be able to soak in life. Not the life that my material things give me, but the life that He has already given me, free from so many unnecessary distractions. I tasted this life for two months in Kenya when we had only a few of our things with us. That taste was incredible. What an amazing thing that we will be able to experience something similar here, in this city we so dearly love, right now.
God is so good! I am humbled to be chosen for this life. I truly am.
Later this week, I’ll be posting a few tips I’ve learned on getting organized and making the separation with our material goods a little easier. Also, if you’re interested and live in the area, I’ll announce when the estate sale will be as soon as we know. Please pray with us on this as we’re still working out the details with a few local companies.
