Welcome to our world.

Welcome to our world.

We are the Matthews family. We are a diverse family to say the least. Here's some background on US...

I am 27. My husband is 49. My daughter is 5. His kids are 19 and 21. We live in the south. Faith-family-friends-food. That's what we live by.

I work in marketing, my husband owns his own business and my daughter is getting ready to start to kindergarten. (tear)

We had some changes to make in our life and we knew it. About 6 months ago I began couponing. Not EXTREME couponing, but I began any way. I learned how to save us money with each shopping trip. It was very exciting for me! I began following other bloggers that wrote about couponing, saving money, etc and even started a blog of my own.

Let me go back to the first F in our life which is FAITH. I believe that God is in the center of everything we do. All of the choices we have to make in regards to ourselves, jobs, children, spouses, etc ALL need to go through him. I'm not wise on my own. I NEED the help of God to guide me through decisions. I began praying over my finances. I began praying that God would open my eyes to the mistakes I was making and help me see how to fix them. I began feeling very guilty about my spending. I prayed that God would show me how to work through all of this.

A little background---I have ALWAYS loved shopping. It was my cardio as Carrie says on SATC. :) But I have ALWAYS been a bargain shopper. My mother taught me at a very young age that you can get so much more if you wait til it goes on sale. :) And I LIVED by that. Everything i've ever bought (with the exception of VERY few things) has been purchased while it was on sale. That's helped a lot, but it didn't exactly fix any problem. It just allowed me to spend the SAME amount of money as those that shopped regular price, I just had a lot more stuff. STUFF. STUFF--stuff-itis.

I read a book called "THE 100 THING CHALLENGE" and if you haven't read it and are considering living on less or even if you are NOT, read it. It's very good. The first chapter, as I recall, gives a scenario of him walking in his house, tripping over a toy, spilling something on his fancy polo shirt, dropping and cracking an IPAD or IPOD (something fancy like that), knocking over a $1,000 vase, etc. (I made a lot of that up. It's something like that. Very dramatic and talked about expensive stuff.) Anyway, he finally gets in his room goes to pick up a pen and realizes that pen cost like $150 bucks... he looked around the room and felt sick. He was consumed, stressed out and overwhelmed by stuff. So he decided to live on 100 things for a year. That got me thinking about MY stuff. (NO, I do NOT want to only have 100 things. But he did make me realize that a lot of times my "stuff" consumes, overwhelmes and stresses me out.)

My closets are filled to a brim. 2 storage rooms, tons of shoes, toys, hunting gear, golfing stuff, home decor, etc crams my storage buildings!

My hubs---well, he has lots of hobbies. And I don't mean reading books. I mean golfing. Hunting. Things that require LOTS of STUFF. Don't get me wrong-I don't begrudge him for his hobbies or for his stuff. We just don't need more. I am a hunter myself so I know that "gear" is important.

My daughter--has one of EVERYTHING. And two of most things. It's insane. She has so much stuff she doesn't even know WHAT she has. And it's funny... out of all the things she has she will come find me and say "Where's that toy--ya know the one from Chick fil a?" And inside I think yep--the innocence of a child speaks volumes. It IS the little things like the happy meal toy, not the fancy V-tech, X-Box looking thing in her room. It's crazy.

We have more stuff than we know what to do with.

I began feeling convicted, yes, that's where I was in my story before I went off on another tangent. (I do that a lot, get ready and bear with me). I began feeling guilty that I had so much yet felt like I needed more. So what does a person do that feels that way? Give everything away? Sell it? I can't do that... or can I.

So that's where this journey begins. You have a family (in the house) of 3. 3 people that have it all.

This is our journey through sifting through the "STUFF" and learning to find peace on less.

I hope that you will follow along this journey. I plan to laugh, cry, get mad, pout, sulk, and be an emotional roller coaster. I think I do that best.