Hello August! Welcome the smell of slow cooked meals and freshly baked muffins. Most people like spring cleaning, but what about fall cleaning? I love giving my home a deep clean & organize it well before the leaves actually fall. I suppose it’s not really fall, but end-of-summer. There’s still so much left of this season.

For my family, I cleaned and organized a great deal just before we had my daughters’ birthday party. We love to host a birthday party every year. What better time to clean your home if you’re going to have guests come over!

I love taking things down, dusting, decluttering, and redecorating. I don’t like buying new decor each season. I do, though, hold onto a few pieces I like for each season, and then, store away until I get the urge to decorate in that season again.

This time, I put Jesus higher. Meaning I decluttered and moved our family crucifix higher on the wall. I make sure the crucifix is honored in my home. Faithful homemaking is putting God first. Loving God, and respecting what is. I decluttered my desk and bookshelf. It’s such a great feeling when all the books are dusted and organized. I keep our family Bible out at all times. I’ve been making more time to sit and read the Gospel, highlighting and reading aloud to my girls. One day, I was reading and highlighting. I got up to do something. When I came back, the page was highlighted again, but with little hands. My daughter had highlighted her own drawing. I did not get mad. I simply gave her some markers and paper, and we kept reading.

I bought a new table centerpiece tray. I wanted something smaller. This would give us more room on the table. And, I bought a new table runner with some plastic placemats for my little messy eaters. I also updated our gliding chair with a new neutral cover that really makes it stand out more. It’s amazing how a chair cover can transform a piece of furniture. It can even hide scratches made by a cat, like mine. This is the one I use, https://amzn.to/3UarR27.

We are still using our beeswax candles at dinner. My daughter loves to blow them out once she’s finished with her meal. She’s practiced so much that she blew out all her candles at the birthday party with one try.

One thing that’s helped clear up space is taking down baby items, clothes, and especially baby items in the kitchen. It’s a hard thing to declutter baby items. Especially if you have no idea if you’ll have another baby in the future or not. I think my husband and I would love one more, but for some, it isn’t that easy. Wanting and being blessed with are two different things. We wanted our first for a long time, and were finally blessed after 2 years and 2 months. And for our second, well we didn’t even have to do anything, it seemed. I just got pregnant. It really is God’s will.

After my daughters’ birthday party with all our family and close friends, we still are decluttering. We had a bunch of double items as gifts and some that were similar to what they already have. So, my husband and I returned a bunch of the toys, getting $137 store credit, and $160 cash. We let our oldest pick out toys she wanted for the first time to use up the $137 store credit. We put the $160 with their cash from their birthday cards. This gave us a total of $410 to divide in two for each of their savings. It worked out really nice. It was really fun watching our daughter pick out toys herself. We usually do grocery pick-up, so we hardly go into the store. We do not take our kids down the toy aisle on every shopping trip. It feels good to humble ourselves. Keeping our home less cluttered allows our kids to have room to run around and grow.

On a side note, I finally got a shoe rack and organized our entryway closet. It looks so much better.

Sometimes decluttering happens on its own, without us taking the initiative. For example, yesterday I accidentally dropped a glass jar of baby food from our upper cabinet onto the counter. It broke and splattered everything below it. My fake flowers, the phone, everything. It even got all over me. It took 45 minutes to clean up the glass, and wall, and even the floor. I ended up throwing away the fake flower arrangement, and now it looks way better. It was meant to be. Now, I’m not saying you should drop glass jars around your messy house, but hey, if it gets it decluttered!

Another example is the time we had a tree fall on our house and break through to a closet. We lost everything in the closet from rain water. It was a blessing in disguise. We ended up with a totally new roof and an empty, clean closet.

Learning to see life this way instead of getting mad is actually a hard thing to do. You might still think, “OH, of course this happened to me.” Or, “I have bad luck.” It’s not too late to change your attitude. It really does make you humble to change the way you see a mess or an accident.

As I continue to declutter our home, I’ve been taking the time to think. Our daughter is starting Catechesis of The Good Shepard in the fall, and I’m a mess. I can’t believe how fast time is going. My daughter is starting her first classes without me. It makes me sad. Yet, I am happy she has the opportunity to take these classes. I am looking ahead, though, to the fall season and all the wonders it will bring.