Living with Less: Day One

Call it nesting, or call it going insane, but I've never been more ready to simplify my life!! We have so much stuff, so much clutter....it's suffocating and it's really hard to focus on tasks when you feel overwhelmed by the presence of STUFF.

I'm hoping the payoff will be two fold. One, I'll be less stressed and more able to concentrate on tasks, and two...decluttering will hopefully result in selling some stuff for Cliffy funds! So here goes...today's focus will be clothing.

I figured go big, or go home...right? Laundry is my nemesis and I'm NEVER caught up. There are constant piles and it's an eye sore at the least and panic attack inducing at the worst. Today I will do NOTHING but get this under control.

1. Go through closets and drawers and bag up anything that doesn't fit or no one wears or we just don't need, like 17 gray tshirts, etc.

2. Put those bags in the storage building.

3. While doing that, keep the laundry going. Sort the freshly cleaned clothes the same way...what we keep and what we bag up.

 

4. Fold, hang, and put away everything we decided to keep.

The goal is to thin out the clothing considerably, and balanced across 4 categories: church, school/work, everyday, and sleep/lounge wear. Each person will have 5 outfits or less from each catergory.

What about the bagged up and stored clothing? My hubby and I are going to take an afternoon this weekend to sort through it all, and put things into 3 piles: toss, donate, and sell. The stuff marked sell will go back into storage and will be used for fundraising for Cliff once the declutter project is complete!

Wish me luck! Off I go to declutter!

A Super Wordy Update

So...I've been a bad, bad girl when it comes to updating you guys about what is going on in the adoption process. Well, I've been bad in general for not keeping up a blog but we'll file that part away for now. :)

Anyhoo, back to the adoption stuff! Here is the story from the very beginning.

Waaaaay back in June of 2014 I saw a picture of a teeny bean named Cliff on my friend Chelsea's facebook page. He immediately reminded me of my brother Jeffery.

Jeffery, Me, and Dad...1980 something

Jeffery passed away when he was nine and while I was only three at the time, I have very distinct memories of holding him (he was so tiny) and I remember my dad laying Jeffery across my lap and I would watch cartoons while rubbing his back and he would fall asleep. I remember when he died that I would get my blanket and go sleep on his side of the room where his crib used to be. I remember how much I loved him, and that loss really shaped my life. I wouldn't have my daughter McKenzie if it wasn't for my brother molding my heart to love children with special needs. His short life changed mine. 

So, back to June 2014 when I see this picture.

I showed Dave and said I would love to adopt him, he's so sweet...and tiny...and needs a family! It was a Sunday, we always go for a drive after church, and we were heading to a state park to go for a hike. So a few months went by, we were preoccupied with life, and job changes, and Kenzi starting Kindergarten, but in September, I came across Cliff's picture again, and I was just drawn to him! I shared him with Dave again, and he said he would think about it, that he felt like he was done having kids, but because I felt so strongly, he would pray about it and really do some soul searching. I truly felt like we were being led to help this precious boy, but I needed Dave to feel the same way, so I gave him some time and space, and a week later, he said he also felt that we needed to give Cliff a home, so we started the process to officially commit to being his new family!

Between then and now we have: completed our homestudy, paper chased like crazy people, gone to jail for fingerprints (Scary!), we've been cleared by local, state, and federal law enforcement, we've been to the doctor, our dog has been to the doctor haha, we've road tripped to Nashville for apostilles, we've mailed our dossier to our facilitator, and all we're waiting for now is a thumbs up from USCIS then we'll be in line, waiting for travel dates! That's still a few months away because all of our paperwork has to be translated, but we're plugging along and we're so ready to snuggle this boy and tell him how LOVED he is, and how happy we are that out of all the people in the whole world, God brought us to him.

Obviously it's very expensive to adopt, but even more so internationally because of all the travel and stuff, but we're plugging along there, too! I'm roughly halfway to fully funded thanks to a couple generous donations, and a friend who offered us a matching grant early on, and I sold approximately 94 billion hair bows haha! I'm confident we'll get there. I know it sounds corny but I just truly believe that if God puts adoption in your heart, you have to trust that He will help you cross the finish line, and the way He does that is through people who have such loving, generous hearts and want to see these kids come home, whether it's through donating, or buying items we're selling to fund the adoption, or ordering a shirt, or just praying for Cliff. All of it means so much to us!

So, what's next? While we're waiting for paperwork and translation and things we don't really have control over at this point, our focus is going to be on getting funded! I need to have surgery on my hand, so I'm trying really hard to be finished raising funds at least 3 months before we bring Cliff home around October. This will give me time to have the surgery and be all healed up! 

So, that's where we are right now! I'll make a separate post about current fundraisers if anyone is interested in helping us get this little guy home! <3

T-Shirts For Cliff!

So I haven't been awesome at getting this blog off the ground, but I wanted to drop in and post about a tshirt fundraiser my friend Anastasia is running for us! 

Isn't it pretty! As of right now we're only 4 shirts away from hitting goal, so if you would, search for $20 and order one for this handsome dude!

You can purchase a shirt here: https://www.bonfirefunds.com/bring-cliff-home

Thanks so much, and I plan to write a couple more posts today with adoption updates and fundraising ideas! 

Love you guys!