You're listening to the decluttered mom podcast.

A podcast built specifically for busy moms by a busy mom.

I'm your host, Diana Renee.

And in 2017, I had my second daughter and it felt like I was literally drowning in my home.

Okay, not literally, but I felt like I couldn't breathe with all of the stuff surrounding me.

Over the next 10 months, I got rid of approximately 70% of our household belongings, and I have never looked back. I kind of feel like I hacked the mom

system, and I'm here to share all the tips, tricks, and encouragement. Let's listen to today's show.

Hello, and welcome to another episode of the Decluttered Mom podcast. I hope the audio is okay on this one. My

microphone is not working for whatever reason. I have no idea. It just decided not to work today.

So I am recording this just right on my phone. I haven't done that in a while for the podcast,

so hopefully it's okay, but just kind of is what it is. We got to roll

with the punches sometimes with these things. So today I wanted to talk about something that comes

up throughout the year, but I think it feels heavier during the school year just because

everybody is so busy, and that is birthday party gifts. And we get so many birthday, I mean, I have two kids and we get

so many birthday party invitations. I can't imagine with more than two kids what that might

look like. And we really try to go to every party that our kids are invited to, even if they are not like a close friend to one

of my girls. And the reason we do that is because I've just seen too many things where kids like

just don't have anyone show up to their birthday party. And that's just really sad. That's super,

super sad. I just don't ever want that to happen to any child.

So if my kids get an invitation and we are available, we are going to that party. And that can get

number one, time consuming, but number two, it can get expensive. And number three, it can also

just take a lot of energy and mental energy because usually I am

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