Hi friend! I am SO GLAD you are here!

An idea that started in late 2017, I started The Green Garten originally as a place to share my classroom ideas, crafts, funnies, and strategies. The word “Garten” is a play on the word Kindergarten because that is where my journey began. I taught Kindergarten for 6 years before moving up to First Grade. I love littles and all the things that come with them. I started it originally as a blog and a space to spark and keep joy in teaching. While I was only a few years into my teaching career, I was watching amazing teachers around me lose their joy for a multitude of reasons and I did not want that to happen to me. I created the original Green Garten as an outlet for my creativity and a way to spread joy. 

In 2019, I became a mama and it solidified my love for the youngest humans of us all. Mama life is not easy and transitioning to motherhood was (and still is, honestly) difficult. I remember feeling like I had been shocked into motherhood, even though I had spent a large portion of my life caring for children, babysitting, camp counseling, and even had years of teaching under my belt. Everyone told me about the sleepless nights, the spit up, the sick babies, but no one prepared me for the mental load, the overwhelm, the sensory overload, and the fatigue from decision making. (You can’t really prepare someone for that, haha!)

My daughter and I found our rhythm, I continued teaching this time as a working mama, and we were ready to add to our family again. Brother joined us in 2021 and that’s when I could feel my joy fading and fading fast. I remember having a hard day where everyone needed everything from me, my daughter needed some emotional support, my son was nursing around the clock, the laundry was piled up, the dishes were covering the counters, and the house was so messy it was overstimulating. 

I was consuming a constant sensory overload sundae with a dollop of lack of sleep. I was literal toast. I was burnt out. And also had no time to be burnt out.

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“It’s not supposed to be this way.”

I remember thinking that on that really hard day. I wanted joy. I wanted to enJOY my kids. I wanted to figure out how I could make life more JOYful. 

Here’s what I knew…

-laundry, dishes, meals - all the home stuff - that was going to be around forever, regardless if I had little kids at home or not. 

-we had too much stuff, the clutter, the toys, the mess was piling up faster than I could pick it up adding to my stress

-I had zero boundaries in my work life that were bleeding into my personal life

And I also knew, I am the only one who can make the changes that need to happen. 

My kids are always going to have needs. My home is always going to need cleaned. Food is always going to need made. 

I started little by little. I purged our home of things we no longer used. I passed items to friends, donated boxes, and joined the community yard sale. I created small systems that I repeated every single day that eventually formed habits in taking care of our home. I built routines up little by little to create more and more space for joy, connection, and play in our home. I realized that I was in control of the way I wanted our daily rhythm to be. 

Instead of wishing, wanting, or waiting for the days I could be a stay at home mama (hey, did I even want that? I love teaching!), I realized that I could control the way our time was spent at home and the way we maintained our home.

Fast forward and these small habitual routines have naturally led to routines and systems in other places (birthday celebrations, car maintenance, our finances, the kids’ closets). I realized my friends were asking me questions about home, kids, and routines more often. I discovered that MAYBE, just MAYBE I might have a knack for this sort of stuff. 

You cannot plan motherhood or any day of parenting, but with plans and systems in place for the controllable parts of life, the uncontrollable parts are less derailing AND you can enjoy your kids because everything else is taken care of.

SO. Here I am. Ready to share it with you!