Confessions of the heart

I have a confession to make. It’s not going to be fun, but it has to be done. The most difficult part is that I know once it’s in the blogosphere, there’s no turning back… a change must be made. So here it is…

A few years back, I began noticing that my kids had a lot of shoes. Made sense, I guess, since Landon gets at least half of his clothes (and shoes) hand-down from some friends of ours and Madisyn is a girl and every girl needs the right pair of shoes to match the outfit, right? For example, Madisyn’s “winter” selection of shoes (excludes her plethora of sandals and shoes that she doesn’t fit into yet) includes 11 pairs of shoes: four pair of boots (two pairs of snow boots, as well as one cute brown pair and one cute off-white pair), three pairs of flats, two pairs of tennis shoes, and two pairs of Crocs. Well, as time progressed, I began noticing that I had a lot of shoes (mostly 4" heals... so practical, I know). Then my mom bought me some Kleenex’s that said something along the lines of, “Behind every great woman is a fabulous pair of shoes.” That’s when it hit me… I have a shoe fetish.

Or at least I thought. Then came trip #3 to Birch Run last spring (yes, I know, who needs three trips in one season?). I bought a cute pink North Face coat from the clearance rack, and it was children’s, so it was even cheaper! I was super excited (as I get with anything pink and anything that is a fantastic deal). When I got home, I began putting all of my newly purchased bargains away and as I went to put that coat away, I noticed that I already owned two other pink North Face coats. Okay, I guess I have a coat fetish too.

Then, along came my dear friend Katie sharing her “simplifying” goals for this year along with some phenomenal blogs (IHeart Organizing & Simple Organized Living). It didn’t take much for me to become incredibly inspired, as I’ve been attempting to make progress in this area of our lives for some time now. So, off to the kids closets I went to start the clearing out process (it's so much easier to start with things that are not your own :) ). WOW… my kids have A LOT of clothes! I could blame their large closets (Madisyn's is as big, if not bigger, than ours), but really, I put all of those clothes in there. And to be honest, they pretty much only wear the same ten outfits that are either my favorite or their favorite.

I proceeded to my closet and noticed that I need to do some clearing out, and this is after I had gone through it a couple of months back and rid myself of five paper bags full of clothes!

Needless to say, I don’t have a shoe fetish. I don’t have a coat fetish. In fact, I don’t even have a clothes fetish. What I have is a shopping problem!!!
There, I said it. Now I have some work to do! There are only two things that I can think of that would be more difficult than shopping less: being told that I can no longer run or that I can no longer eat Thai food.

This is all said, tongue in cheek, of course… as my sister-in-law and I have our bi-annual Birch Run trip planned in 11 days (but who’s counting?). My goal this year is to bring back fewer items, but more of what we need and things I really love, and not, “This is such a great bargain, how can I pass it up?” sort of stuff.