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Displaying Kids’ Artwork: How to Minimize Clutter
You all know I’m pretty crazy about containing clutter. My physical space impacts my psychological space so much. That’s why I loved reading The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up. Even though I didn’t agree with All.The.Things in that book, I did love the idea of everything having a place and making it a habit to regularly purge the things you don’t love. Enter children’s artwork. Displaying kids’ artwork is such a challenge! I love that my children want to produce and display art, and yet it’s hard to find space for it in a place that still contributes to an overall feeling of calm around our house.
My … Read More
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Home Organization: The Pantry
I didn’t intend to tackle the pantry before a whole host of other projects that are more urgent, but I honestly couldn’t take it anymore. We don’t have a ton of kitchen space, and our cabinets are deep, so stuff just kind of gets stuffed toward the back.
Matt and Henry were out for a run and Tate was still sleeping, so I seized the opportunity to pull everything out. I wasn’t sure what the plan of action was going to be, so seeing everything on the counter helped me generate next steps. I started grouping like-items and realized that they primarily fell into two categories:
- Things to store in
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A Family Table
When I was an American Studies major in college, we talked a lot about artifacts and how they can give you insight into a particular culture–how people lived, what they valued, etc.
On a separate note, we talked a lot about materialism and how a consumeristic culture can falsely equate purchasing products with attaining happiness and contentment.
I carry this dualistic interpretation of objects with me, which may explain why I had to think long and hard before trying to convince Matt to splurge on a hand-crafted dining room table.
It started with a simple Craigslist search. We knew that we wanted to upgrade our cute $50-mid-century … Read More
