E and M share a middle name and were born on the 12th of August and February, exactly six months apart! With their blond hair, they could be sisters!

She also had lots of fun playing outside with C! He is two years older and had lots of good suggestions of what they should play, including a tractor ride, but that picture isn’t on my phone where I am posting from, so I will put it up later.

www.livingonadime.com says this:

Women (stay at home)

5-7 everyday comfortable attractive outfits (NO SWEATS, I REPEAT, NO SWEATS!)
1 outfit for dirty work such as painting
4-5 casual dressy outfits (depending on your social life)
4-5 dressy church outfits
2 pairs of comfortable shoes (one for painting and one for wearing everyday)
2-3 pairs casual dressy shoes like loafers
4 pairs dressy shoes for church (black, navy, white and tan pumps or flats)
Adjust shoes for your wardrobe

www.notesfromthefrugaltrenches.com says this:

• 1 work black skirt with a nice fashionable flair
• 3 work dress shirts – 1 red, 1 green, 1 black
• 5 dresses – appropriate for work, an evening out, Church, functions etc
• 1 pair jeans & 1 casual t-shirt
• 1 pair work dress pants
• 1 workout outfit and 1 swimsuit
• 1 formal work jacket &1 informal long cardigan
• 1 pair PJ’s and 1 nightie

www.smallnotebook.org says this:

pants: 3 (1 dark denim classic boot cut, 1 dark denim trouser cut, 1 white)

blouses: 6 (2 for winter, 4 for spring) – It was easy to bring lots of blouses, they pack up so small!

sweaters: 6 (4 for winter, 2 light cardigans for spring) – I think I brought too many sweaters.

tank tops: 5 (for layering)

shoes: 3 (boots, heels, and flats)

coats: 2 (a wool winter coat and a spring rain coat)

dresses: 2 (both black) – I couldn’t decide, so I brought both.

handbag: 1

accessories: 3 scarves and a necklace

The author of www.makingthishome.com embarked on a No Buying New Clothes challenge and talks about it here.

Miss Minimalist has a 10 item wardrobe here.

So what do you think?

Leave a comment and tell me number of pants, tops, dresses…

I emailed everyone I could think of who has lived cross-culturally to get advise on what to take or not take. I got lots of good ideas. Some people said the same things as each other. Some said opposite things! Some I really didn’t think fit us or our situation, while some were ideas I had already considered.

It is so hard to know what to take! Which clothes will I want to wear, which shoes will be good for walking a lot living in a big city, which toys does E care about and which does she not, what kitchen-y things will I want…. We are visiting my mother in law right now, and C helped her clean out an old storage unit. Upon looking at the big trash pile at the curb, she said “What mattered then, doesn’t matter anymore.” And I know it will be true. There will be things I packed up, that when I open that box later, I will think I should have just thrown away or sold. And there will be some things I take with us that I will later wonder why I wasted the suitcase space on. Even on our tour of Texas, I am wondering why I brought some of the shirts I did, and why I left at home some of my new clothes. Is this a sign of poor planning or not being content with what I have? Hmm..something to think about.

I am noticing that it wouldn’t be too bad to actually have a week or two’s worth of clothing, and when you have worn it all, you just wash it all and start over. I am wondering how many pieces of clothes it takes to have a good wardrobe size but not too much. My walk-in closet was full. That was too much. I recently read the book 7: An Experimental Mutiny Against Excess by Jen Hatmaker, and it is amazing. In one chapter, she picks out 7 articles of clothing to wear for a whole month. While I think that is a bit too few for real life, she mentioned how she had 327 articles of clothing in her closet, and I bet I was not too far off that before I started sorting things to sell or donate. Yet I looked in there every day and said, I don’t want to wear any of that! I am inspired by people with small wardrobes like this lady.

What do you think about this? Do you have a lot of clothes? Few? Do you wear the same ones over and over again? More tomorrow on this subject…

If you had to move and could only take a few suitcases, what would be in your suitcases?

How am I doing with living out of suitcases you might ask? Well so far, so good. Which I totally credit to the grace of the Lord, not to my own self, because I am somewhat of a homebody normally and crave routine. Over the course of that 50 or so total days, we will stay with some of my favorite people. Most of whom we stay with because they have TWO extra bedrooms in their home! (I know some of my dear readers might be co-sleepers with their children, and to each his own, but I don’t like sharing a bedroom with my daughter!) It is also somewhat nice that since it isn’t my home, when there is downtime, I don’t feel the need to clean or pack or do something “productive”. We are definitely right in the midst of transition and I probably should have blogged through more of the process because it would certainly be entertaining to read, but I was just too busy! I’ll try to catch you up…

We spent most of April pretending to be on the show Clean Sweep. Anyone remember that TLC show? I don’t know if it is still on or not, I think maybe old shows, but I don’t think they are making new episodes. I loved that show, because one day I would LOVE to be a professional organizer. Peter and his crew went to someone’s house and took their two messiest rooms (which usually looked completely unlivable and I always thought they must have just chunked a bunch of junk into the room before the crew got there) and fixed them up. But it started with taking everything outside and putting it on one of three tarps marked “keep”, “sell”, or “trash”. Well, I didn’t have any tarps, and I certainly didn’t take anything outside to my yard, but I spent most of April wandering around my house and mentally putting things in those categories. Then at the end of April we had a giant yard sale, with the leftovers getting picked up Saturday afternoon by a charity truck. I HIGHLY recommend this method of ending a yard sale. It beats the last one we had where we had to haul the stuff back in the garage.

We boxed up lots of other stuff and C called in all his moving debts and our friends helped us put stuff in storage. There are still a few things to do and get out of our house, still a pile to take to storage and donate and lots of suitcases to re-pack.  We also need to get new flooring in one room of our house and do some touch up painting. Last night about 10:30, we got a text that our potential renter has decided to do something else, so now we also have to put it back on the market to rent and find someone. Unfortunately, we didn’t leave it looking spiffy for showings, so anyone who looks at it while we tour is going to have to imagine the junk away!

That is what is going on with our family. It explains why I haven’t blogged much lately! I also am sad to sad I got behind on my read the Bible in a year plan. I get daily emails with the passage, so I saved them all as unread in my email account so I will try to slowly catch up. I am proud of myself for keeping up with it until April, which is longer than most years. And now I have plenty of free time to catch up, except that I will have to prioritize that over the oh-so-fun internet/blogs/pinterest/facebook. Speaking of pinterest, I feel like the house I am staying at could be great pinterest inspiration, so I am going to try to let me post some of her best projects! Until then, you can find us by following the trail of fast food and the wheel marks from our rolling suitcases (which C said I packed way to much into)!

Since when did my girl get big enough to sit at the big kid table??

I see a future career in hairdressing! SK is such a sweet friend to allow this!

Evan’s expression says, “What can I do? Crazy women drivers!”

Well there have been no new posts because I have been busy, and I transferred my domain to a different company so that is why it hasn’t worked right the past few days. I am in the process of setting up all the new stuff here so it will keep changing for a few days until I get it worked out. And I am sad because I think some of my old pictures got lost in the transfer. Oh well.

What have you been up to lately?

One night in the early weeks of baby E’s life, her daddy decided to try white noise to see if she would sleep better. And lo and behold, she did. So he bought a broken iphone from someone for really really cheap, and installed the Simply Noise App on it and let it be her white noise machine. She still uses it, but the best part about it is that it muffles the noises I make around the house while she is asleep so that I don’t wake her up when I run the garbage disposal at night as I do the dishes.

I know some people sleep with actual sound machines, but you can just download this on your phone and have it with you. So for someone who needs to take a white noise machine with them places to sleep, this would be a good solution. Or if your child isn’t sleeping, give it a try.

I have been subbing a few times to earn a little extra cash on Friday when the hubby is off and can keep E. It has been good so far. I was nervous the night before the first time I subbed! It was a little like right before the first day of school. (Yes, teachers get nervous before the first day of school just like students do!) I felt a little sad that I wouldn’t get to spend the next day with my family. And I wondered what kind of kids I would have in my room. But it turned out fine. I subbed at a school where I knew one teacher (a girl I went to college with) and so it helped that I knew someone in the building. The teacher had a pretty nice schedule of classes, some small ESL math classes, and some upper level classes.

The next week I took a half day job at the school I used to work at. This was great! It was great because I got to sleep late and see my family for half the day. And it was really great because I ended up subbing in 8th grade, and having some of the same students that I taught two years ago as 6th graders! All day I had kids come by and say hi to me. Because some of the students already knew me as a teacher, I had instant authority, whereas as a sub, you somewhat have to earn it. That made the teaching part of the day really nice. It was also good to get to talk to some old co-workers! This week I am subbing there again, this time at the request of a fellow math teacher. I may even break out jeans and an old school shirt I still have!