Minimalist Advent

I’ve always loved the idea of an Advent calendar but I’ve never actually had one.  A couple of times we’ve bought the inexpensive chocolate deals for the kids and it just seemed so excessive to have a treat every day (and the chocolate is often gross) and so it just never really “took” as a family tradition.  But I like the idea of “marking the days” which is what it seems like it is all about.  Based on my very brief research (5 minutes of google) advent calendars have only been around for 100 or so years and the ones that have gifts in them for only about 60 years, so it’s not like Jesus said “give them loads of stuff every day leading up to and including my actual birthday!” right?  And I don’t want to send the message to my kids that “you get a new ‘thing’ every day” and then there is just more junky stuff around the house, which drives me crazy. 

I looked around on the internet and I found some really fun ideas like this one http://www.theminimalistmom.com/2012/11/clutterfreeadventcalendar/

but even that requires more time and planning than I am capable of at this point.  So I decided to do something that kills two birds with one stone (on a side note, that is really an unfortunate metaphor isn’t it, with the killing of the birds and everything?).  I’m going to donate or get rid of one “thing” every day leading up to Christmas, and I’m going to document it here so that I can hold myself accountable.  Not only will it free up more space (and be less stuff to move to our new house) but it will passing things on that could be of potential use by others.  I’m going to try to talk the kids into doing it too, to make some room for whatever new might be coming into the house this holiday season but we’ll see how that goes.  Wish me luck!

Day #1 – Our Crib – ok, so this is totally picking the low hanging fruit because we were going to get rid of it anyway, but give me a break, I just finished working 60+ hours over the past 4 days and I’m tired.  Plus, it’s been sitting in our garage for the last 3 weeks and it really needs to go.  Surprisingly, even though all 3 of our kids slept in there as a baby, I have no emotional attachment to the crib so this is not really a painful one to give away.  So tonight we will put it on Craig’s List!  (I would absolutely donate it but there are no charitable organizations that will accept cribs in our city that I can find due to safety risks).  If you’re looking for a free crib let me know.