My Story
About Me
The Short Version
For a lot of people, 2020 demanded a lot of change from us. For me, it was saying goodbye to a 15-YEAR CAREER in Event Planning and staying home with my husband and then 10 and 7-year-old kids.
Trying to stay positive I dove into two things I love and that kept me sane as a working parent, ORGANIZING and DESIGN. Welcome to the adventures of Mindyana Jones Designs!
It’s my goal to help other parents create some organization and peace in their homes AND in their heads. Something about getting our “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s and someday’s” finally out of our heads and on to paper relieves such a big mental weight. Join me on this journey into mindset and giving structure to our chaotic and beautiful lives.
About Me
The Long Version
The VERY BEGINNING
I grew up in sunny Florida, just 45 minutes from the beach and Disneyworld.
I’m the oldest of 5 kids and was lucky enough to meet my husband here in Utah while shopping for a laptop at Best Buy. I was so new to Utah that I wasn’t even sure if I gave him the right cell phone number. Yep, the cute sales guy asked for my number after we flirted for an hour over what laptop I should buy. Luckily it was the right number and eventually, we tied the knot.
The CAREER & KIDS
Fast forward – I was an Event Venue Manager for 15 years for a large organization in Salt Lake City, Utah. I spent my days hosting and planning parties, conferences, meetings, private movie screenings and catering for tens of thousands of people. I absolutely adored my job and never thought I would leave it.
During those super busy years, I had a son and daughter and managed the life that so many parents are living on a daily basis, being a working parent. I went through so many emotions over the years and carried plenty of the “mom guilt” that creeps up on us all too often.
{Am I spending enough time with my kids?}
{Am I letting them have too much screen time because all I want to do is veg out myself after a long day}
& {WOW, time is going by SO FAST!}
And when I say “working parent” this literally covers every parent out there, whether you’re outside of the home or inside, adulting and running a household is WORK.
The MIDDLE YEARS
Over the years I developed a few family charts that would work for a month or two and then somehow things would slowly unravel. I’d spend some Sundays grocery shopping with some menus in mind but by the end of the week, I somehow had spoiled vegetables in the fridge. I just kept thinking, how am I SO organized at work but when it comes to my household I couldn’t stay on top of things. I felt like a failure more often than not and just kept thinking that if I had more time in the day, things would be less chaotic.
The EPIPHANY
What I was missing were the TOOLS and a PLAN to keep things on track. Life is BUSY and sometimes when we need to take the time to take a step back and look at our habits and the current processes we have in place. Just like I would be doing at work as an Event Planner. In terms of my emotional distress, I finally realized in my mid-30’s (only like 3 years ago) that the messes would NEVER end and our personalities continue to grow and change as time goes on. What worked for our family one month doesn’t necessarily hold the same excitement and for us the next. If we HAD more time in the day, we’d just quickly fill it up with more. I let go of the guilt and the shame and started working on new realistic and FLEXIBLE tools.
The 2020 PANDEMIC
Like so many others, 2020 kinda turned me upside down. I went from working out of the home full time to somehow trying to keep my kids on top of their school work online and being home 24/7. Did anyone else have a 7-year-old where you couldn’t even leave the room during “school time”? I think we were all just trying to get by at that point. It was pretty rocky at first, but we finally all found a rhythm.
I had the whole world ahead of me, what was I going to do with my life next? I often joked, “what do I want to be when I grow up” – even though I had been in the Event Industry for the last 17 years.
Slowly over Spring, I moved toward three things that I love – ORGANIZING – Graphic DESIGN – and HELPING OTHERS. Helping others you say? I realized that event planning is all about human connection, one of my favorite things to do is to help a client create order out of the chaos in their head. They’d come in with an idea for an event jumbled in their head and it was such a satisfying and beautiful thing to assist and guide them all the way to the special event day.
This brings me to you.
The ETSY SHOP
Using my organizational skills, my experience in event graphic design, and a compass telling me to help make others’ lives easier, MindyanaJonesDesigns was born on Etsy in 2020. I started with kid’s chore charts and birthday invitations that we used in our own household and then moved on to things like Menu Planners, Cleaning Zone Cards, and even started creating graphics digitally for morning routines. So many of the things in the shop come from my own daily life and experience as a parent to 2 VERY different kids as they grow older.
My never-ending journey for the store will be to help YOU in finding what works for “the now” and help guide you along the process here on this website. Whether that’s teaching you how to upload your planner to Google Slides or offering multiple versions of chore charts to keep your kids engaged and interested.
The FUTURE
I whole-heartedly believe that’s it all about the journey and not the destination. No routine or idea is perfect, but we’re doing the best we can along the way with what we have.
It’s my goal to help others create some organization and peace in their homes AND in their heads. Something about getting our “shoulda, woulda, coulda’s and someday’s” finally out of our heads and on to paper relieves such a big mental weight. Join me on this journey into giving structure to our crazy and beautiful lives and forgiving ourselves along the way.