Decking the home is one of my favorite parts of the holiday season. As soon as Thanksgiving is over, we break out the stockings, ornaments, Christmas books and other relics that have been collected over the years. They give our home a cozy feel and go perfectly with our Christmas music and undending supply of sweet treats.

But there comes a point when we’ve had enough sugar, right?

That’s how I feel about the festive look, too.

During the days between Christmas and New Year’s, I started feeling that itch to simplify, de-clutter and otherwise rock my world with the promise of a new year and a clean slate, but much stronger than ever before. Since I’m definitely not a minimalist by nature, this is a definitely shift for me. But I suppose it’s just one more step along the journey toward a simpler, more natural lifestyle.

After all, less stuff leaves more room for living life.

I thought I’d share my goals for simplifying and a few helpful resources with you and then I’d love to hear about your goals and experiences in the comments.

My Plan of Attack

From Paper to Digital

One of my biggest sources of clutter is paper. I’m currently learning to use Evernote as a place to store all kinds of things that normally clutter up my home, such as:

  • photos of my kids’ artwork (so I can then recycle it guilt-free!)
  • recipes/articles clipped off the web rather than printed out
  • documents I want to keep track of
  • recipes from magazines that clutter up my kitchen counter
  • important notices that come home from school

I don’t have a fancy desktop scanner (just a printer/scanner), but I’m going to start scanning as much paper as possible in order to clear some horizontal spaces in my house and significantly slim down my home management notebook.

Toys, Not Junk

One of the biggest lessons I’ve been learning lately is how bogged down, uninspired, and overwhelmed kids can get when they have too many toys. We are trying desperately to pare down our toys and even children’s books, so that we’re left with only the toys that not only are loved by our children but also enrich and inspire their creative play.

While we did take a good-sized bag of toys out of our playroom before Christmas, we still want to tak more out. We’re sending some toys to the grandparents’ house as an alternative to getting rid of everything that we don’t want in our home.

Minimizing the Bookshelf

I think I’ve mentioned this here before, but I am a bit of a book hoarder. Well, as I type this, my husband is helping me eat my frog and I am finally starting to go through my many boxes of books that have been cluttering up our garage (I have way more than I’ve ever had shelf space for).

I’m trying to really choose to keep only books that I will either read again, that my kids will read, or that I might want to reference someday.

Resources

As I mentioned on Sunday, two of my favorite resources for know why to simplify and more importantly, how, are Tsh of Simple Mom‘s books Organized Simplicity and One Bite at a Time. Until tonight (Wednesday) at midnight, you can still enter to win a copy of One Bite at a Time!

Another great book that I’m currently devouring is Simplicity Parenting, which isn’t simply a how-to but also an awesome why resource for families who want to see their children transformed by the power of less.

What are you hoping to simplify or de-clutter this year? Do you have any helpful resources to recommend?