3 Practical Tools for Advent Self Care

"Let every heart prepare Him room."

In the excess of the holiday season in America, I've found that preparing room in my heart for Jesus' coming can look like clearing out clutter in lots of other areas of life. Here are 3 practical tools to equip you as you move through the last days of the Advent season.

1) Unroll.Me

A clear inbox doesn't equal a clear heart, but getting rid of the junk in my inbox reduces my stress and make it more likely for me to focus on what really matters. Unroll.Me is a service that lists all of the email lists you're on and allows you to unsubscribe to any of them with the click of a mouse. You may be shocked - I've unsubscribed from 200+(!!) email lists this way.

​2) Paper Karma

Same idea, but for physical junk mail. We moved into a new house a few years ago and inherited DOZENS of catalogue mailings sent to the previous owners. Paper Karma is an app that lets you take a picture of the mailing address and request to be unsubscribed. Keeping unnecessary paper out of the house means less time dealing with it and more time for my priorities.

3) Customer Service Shalom

This single article on The Art of Simple has changed the way I interact with baristas, grocery checkout clerks, even the folks providing live chat support for my website. Author Osheta Moore writes about becoming fed up with the kind of consumer she was becoming, and the three commitments she made to remember that "people always matter more than things". A beautiful reminder as we queue up at the post office and wait in the checkout line for last-minute gifts.

Do these tips surprise you? Resonate?
What helps you prepare room in your heart for Jesus? ​I'd love to learn!