Change starts at home.

Our Christmas trees sitting desolate on the side of our house, waiting for Uriah to take it to the city drop-off site.  I went through all of my Christmas decorations last week, separated the items that don't really have any sentimental value and set them aside for the spring yard sale.  I'm down to only three Christmas totes of decorations and ornaments, one for Halloween/Fall and one for Easter/spring.  I feel pretty good about that.

Fresh on the heels of moving last year, and it feels like we moved a lot, this year I am implementing the: something in, something out philosophy.  That goes for clothes, toys and anything extra we think we might need in this house.

Want a new book?  An old one goes out.
Having a birthday party and you get some new toys?  An equal number goes out.
Need a new shirt?  Donate an old one.

In addition to something in, something out, I generally want to use less.  We're back on our menu-planning after taking a couple of weeks off for the holidays and I've found that we're at the grocery store so much less (mostly just for milk and eggs and bread).  The things that we do use, I'd like for the majority of them to be American made.  I broached the subject with Uriah when we were on our way to Kansas City and we both agree that keeping our money here is important.  We try to shop at the smaller stores and keep our money local as much as we can.  Initially we thought we'd have to go to Sioux Falls to do our Christmas shopping, but we managed to do all of our shopping between Spencer and Spirit Lake.

I think it will be a slow process, this going into a less is more mentality, but I don't want to raise kids who are wasteful and don't value the things that they do have.  Change starts at home, and we're starting now!