A DIY Gratitude Jar & My Experience

Back at the end of 2016, I had the idea to create a DIY gratitude jar. The idea was to write down what I’m grateful for/happy about from each week. Naturally, I roped my family into it as well.

At the end of every week, we would write down one thing we were grateful for. That was it. One thing.

Now, if you know my family at all you would know that “thrilled” wasn’t a word that would be used to describe how they felt about this. Well, some more than others.

I’m not going to call anyone out in particular but sometimes someone would have to write 2 things down because they didn’t do the one from the week prior.

This DIY gratitude jar was supposed to be something fun & easy. It wasn’t always that way which I kind of knew going into this little project but thought the benefits would 100% outweigh that. Forgive 2017 me, she was young & naïve. Hahaha

In the interest of full disclosure, we don’t do this anymore. But, I do keep my own gratitude journal where I write 3 things every day. So, the same practice just done differently and it doesn’t involve me having to nag my family to write what they’re grateful for from the week. 🙂

There were two intentions with this:

The first was to get us to focus on gratitude more. It can be so easy to not appreciate the things around you. To only focus on the bad parts of the week because sometimes they can take up more space in our days than we even really realize. I wanted us to step back and find things, big or small, that we can be grateful for each week.

I’m sure some weeks we were reaching for something to be grateful for. But that was also part of the point. Some weeks are just bad but within those weeks, there’s something to be grateful for. Even if that thing is our health or our cozy bed.

The second intention was at the end of the year to sit around & go through each of the memories from the jar.

That was the intention.

Admittedly, it never happened.

Yes, you read that right. We never read through any of the memories from our 2017 DIY gratitude jar. It’s sat here, on this bookshelf, probably since February 2018. We had hopes to read through them but never did.

Actually, the first time I’ve opened it in 3 years was right before I wrote this post. I didn’t even go through the whole jar, just read a few off the top. It was interesting to go back and see what we were thankful for from 3 years ago.

One of mine was that I aced my group commercial project & made an A on one of my finals. In my defense, that final was in a very difficult class. 🙂 A few of the others I read was about food so we know where my gratitude & priorities lie. Haha

How-To Create Your Own DIY Gratitude Jar:

First, find a jar. The one we had already had the “Memories” tag attached but that isn’t at all necessary. It was just a jar big enough to fit 408 little sheets of paper. (Did I do that math right?)

Next, grab some paper. You can use printer paper, notebook paper, whatever you have. We had pretty card stock and since this jar was going to be sitting on the counter, I wanted it to be pretty.

I would cut a bunch at once so that way you’re ready to go when each week ends. Cut them about 1.5-2 inches wide.

Now, you just need to decide when you’re going to write down the one thing you’re grateful for each week. Maybe it’s Sunday. Maybe it’s Friday. I want to say we did Sunday but who knows? Sometimes I think we were writing them on Monday or Wednesday. I know, I know…but life happens.

The hardest part is going to be keeping up with it each week & not forgetting or just giving up.

I roped my family into doing this with me each week but feel free to do this by yourself. If you rope your family into it too beware that getting them to follow through with this each week may be the hardest part. Haha Just a little heads up for ya!

The final step is to actually remember to read through all of the gratitude slips at the end of the year.

Turns out, that final step is kinda difficult. At least for us. We kept saying we were going to look through them and then never did. Oh well…

Gratitude is Important

I wrote an honesty hour on gratitude before Thanksgiving. You can read the full thing here but there’s one part I want to bring into this post. I wrote,

“The goal of keeping a gratitude list isn’t to have this magical life where writing those things come so easily and you don’t have to think about it. A gratitude list is great for those days & it’s great to look back on what you wrote on those days. I can read some of them & without looking at the date know what day that was.

But the gratitude list is really great for those days that are just bad. They’re for the days that can only be summed up as a dumpster fire and you have to stop and think what you could possibly be grateful for that day. It forces you to look at the bad moments, sift through it and find the decently good parts that you can be thankful for. It’s not always easy.”

It’s why I think gratitude is important: not every day is going to be great but that doesn’t mean that there aren’t good things in the mix too. It is also not for you to ignore & try to override the bad day but to take a step back and appreciate the good things that are present in your life.

I hope you take this challenge.

I hope you’ll take this little challenge & create your own DIY Gratitude Jar. Even if you don’t go back and look through them at the end of the month or the year, it’s still a good practice to have in your life. I’ll be continuing writing in my gratitude journal so you won’t be taking this challenge alone.

Comment below and let me know if you decide to create a Gratitude Jar. I’d love to hear about it & what your plans are for it. Will it be just you or your family too? Colorful paper or plain? Will you write something daily or weekly? Tell me!

Love,