2024 Year In Review

2024 was the year I became a father — nothing else can define a year quite like that. My wife and I welcomed Henry Robert Olpinski into the world on February 28th, 2024 at 8:37pm. He arrived 5 days early and just 3 hours before the leap year.

My son was born 6lbs 10oz, 21 inches long, perfectly healthy, and undeniably handsome. There were complications, but mom and baby are healthy.

Outside of work, nearly all of my energy was dedicated to supporting my wife, providing for our family, and taking care of our home. As a new dad, there’s not too much you can do the first year except support your wife so she can support the baby. Raising a child requires effective teamwork and communication, and it’s important that we’re all attentive to each other’s changing needs.

Not surprisingly, I didn’t work on any freelance projects and only published one new blog post. I’m still working full-time for the Instacart Business team as well, so freelancing and blogging took a back seat in 2024.

But it was a big year in other ways!

After we welcomed our son into the world, I enjoyed 4 full months of parental leave as my wife and I adjusted to life as parents. This precious bonding time was invaluable and irreplaceable. Later in the year, we splurged on an anniversary getaway at a chalet in the Adirondacks and took a family retreat in the Thousand Islands during the fall.

My wife and I celebrated our 8-year wedding anniversary, we renovated our garage and the storage room, and finished the year by purchasing a brand new 2025 Chevrolet Traverse Z71.

My newsletter surpassed 4,000 subscribers and my Etsy Shop did over $3,000+ in sales — two huge milestones! Sadly, I decided to close my S-Corp (Matthew’s Design Company, Inc.) because it was too expensive to run with no freelance income flowing through it.

I’m talking about all that and more in this year’s review!

Instacart & Freelance Work

In November, I celebrated 3 years of working at Instacart. I’m fully settled into my role and driving more impact than ever. I’m quite grateful for the 4 months off I had to adjust to life as a father and help my wife recover. That bonding time was precious and memorable.

The Instacart Business team is working on some exciting new features that I’m honored to be driving from a design standpoint.

I didn’t work on any freelance projects this year and ultimately decided to close my S-Corp (Matthew’s Design Company, Inc) due to high operational costs. I’ll still have my company name, brand, and website, but any freelance work I do will be taxed as 1099-MISC income again.

This also means I’m planning to stay employed for the foreseeable future. The freelance market has been upended in recent years by Covid, the rise of AI tools, return to office mandates, and more. On the flip side, the tech industry has been devastated by mass layoffs.

I’ll do more freelance work someday, but with a wife and new baby to support, I’m thankful for stable employment in this season of life!

Website Analytics

My website didn’t experience any unusual fluctuations in traffic this year. In fact, I was impressed that mattolpinski.com still received 54k unique visitors and 77k total page views considering I didn’t publish a single blog post until December.

Etsy Shop

In 2023, I spent months using Midjourney to create AI-generated artwork. As of 2024, I’ve published over 375 listings to my Etsy shop as digital downloads, which means I don’t have to manage inventory or shipping.

This year I was able to more than 3x my shop revenue, orders, and sales while cutting my Etsy ad spend by over 50%. I improved my shop images and painstakingly optimized every listing using Alura, which seems to have worked quite well.

Here are my 2024 shop stats and the increase year over year:

• 26.1k views (+120%)
• 10.6k visits (+74%)
• 356 orders (+283%)
• 675 sales (+214%)
• 84 reviews (+104%)
• $3,162 revenue (+254%)
• $411 Etsy Ad spend (-51%)

Throughout the year, I had conversations with many of my customers (mostly moms) who’ve told me how happy they were to find my shop. This helped me learn a lot about my audience and the broader landscape of the Etsy marketplace.

Here are some of my favorite new listings that I’ve added to the shop:

Etsy is saturated with nursery-themed art as well as more sophisticated artwork for adults. But there are surprisingly limited options for boys aged 3-8. These moms are upgrading their sons bedrooms and looking for something more engaging than nursery prints.

As a result, I’ve stumbled onto a bit of a niche and my space and train-themed prints have been my best sellers by far. Since I grew up loving trains, creating train-themed prints has been a perfect fit for my shop.

Personal Life

This year has been an adventure. As they say, “The days are long but the years are short”. Now having my own child, I can attest to the truth behind that statement.

That’s why my wife and I were intentional about spending time with each other and our new baby. You know how parents always say, “Soak up every minute because it goes by so fast”? We actually did that!

I’ve captured some of the most memorable moments in this next section of this year’s review. This is the only time I share glimpses into my personal life on my blog and I’m excited to share them with you!

Adirondack Mountain Getaway

Traveling is definitely harder with an infant, but we managed to take two really lovely trips this year. The first trip was an anniversary weekend retreat to a brand-new chalet in the Adirondacks that overlooks a reservoir. It was absolutely beautiful. Happy 8 years babe (8/28/16) ❤️

I had the AirBnB hosts set up the cabin for our anniversary which made it extra special. We had a great time and so did little Henry! This was also our first time attempting long distance driving and an overnight with an infant (and our dog Lily). Our Honda CR-V was packed, but thankfully I installed a roof rack which came in clutch!

Family Retreat in the Thousand Islands

At the end of September, Rachel and I took both sets of grandparents, Henry, and our dog Lily to the Thousand Islands in New York state. We spent 4 days at a hand-built cabin on Wellesley Island which sits on the St. Lawrence river. The views were stunning and there’s nothing like a cozy lake-front cabin in New York during the fall.

While there, we mostly stayed in the cabin, drank coffee, played cards, and enjoyed the picturesque views. Lily jumped off the dock into the water for the first time and loved it! Henry had a wonderful time with his grandparents. While there, spent a day at Boldt Castle & Boldt Yacht House in Alexandria Bay.

This special time with family created new memories that we’ll cherish for years to come.

Renovating the Garage

Toward the end of the summer, I realized the 10×10 storage room in our basement isn’t going to cut it. When you have kids, you accumulate… things. Not to mention we’ve accumulated quite a few of our own things over the years (garage sale coming Spring 2025). So, I decided to install storage racks to the ceiling in our garage — the one place in our house with free usable space.

But the garage was unfinished. It needed insulation, drywall, paint, and new lighting all before the racks could be installed. And since the garage had to be empty, I decided to paint the floor too. It was also an absolute mess.

But who has time for a project like this with a 6 month old? So I hired a professional for the drywall and handled the painting and electrical myself. I bought 9 Fleximounts racks and created 384 cubic feet of storage space above our two-car garage. I hung (5) 4×8 foot storage racks from the ceiling and mounted (4) 2×4 shelves to the walls.

Renovating the Storage Room

Two weeks before Thanksgiving I found mold in our storage room. Apparently the humidity in our basement had gotten out of control. No one ever told me that if the humidity in a basement (even a finished one) gets too high it can lead to mold growth. Lesson learned!

This was something that had to be dealt with right away. I had an expert look at it, but did the remediation myself. We emptied the storage room, remediated the mold, disinfected every item, and put it all back together. I tossed all the old shelves and had 45 new plywood shelves cut for all 9 storage racks.

I also installed a dehumidifier in the basement along with a fan and air purifier in the storage room to control the humidity and prevent a disaster like this from happening again. This was a massive and unexpected project right before the holidays, but one that ultimately helped us reorganize and declutter.

Quality of Life Improvements

We made a variety of life improvements this year too. My favorite was the cantilever umbrella we bought to provide shade on our patio. Our backyard faces directly south, so the sun is constantly beating down on the patio. We have no shade from trees, so it gets too hot and too bright to enjoy until late in the afternoons.

I considered several options including a retractable awning, a sail shade, and a traditional picnic umbrella. The awning was going to cost over $5,000 and the sail shade was going to require a lot of work and not provide the shade we needed. A traditional umbrella would leave a giant pole in the middle of my patio.

Once I discovered cantilever umbrellas, I was hooked. The base is offset from the canopy and it’s completely retractable. It also rotates 360 degrees and tilts 45 degrees, meaning I can get shade anywhere I need on my patio for about $350.

We also found these couch arm tables for our living room. These are like tiny portable sofa tables, but they don’t take up any floor space! They are incredibly sturdy and a new household favorite. They’re a little pricey, but well worth it.

2025 Chevy Traverse Z71

In early October, our 2010 Honda CR-V started having some unexpected problems. Thankfully we were able to get those issues fixed fairly easily, but not before getting stranded a few times and needing to call friends to get home.

This is not acceptable when you have an infant. We needed at least one completely reliable car. Our used cars have always served us well, but this time we decided to splurge and shop new. We did our research and landed on the Chevy Traverse Z71.

We couldn’t find the exact configuration we wanted near our location, so I did a build online and sent it to our local dealership. Turns out there was one in production and scheduled to be delivered in a few weeks. That’s how we ended up with a 2025 model just before Thanksgiving!

This is truly the ultimate family car with an interior designed for moms and an exterior designed for dads. It’s the largest mid-size SUV in it’s class.

On the inside, it has tons of cargo room, 7 seats, a panoramic sunroof, huge infotainment display, and dozens of great features. On the outside, it looks sporty, modern, tough, and rugged. It’s beautiful and capable. The white and black color scheme really highlights how awesome this car looks!

Home, Summer Nights, & Family Time

My wife and I love our home in upstate NY. Our property backs up to 1,000 acres of open farmland. The sunsets in the fall are simply breathtaking. We didn’t get to have any bonfires this season on account of Henry’s bedtime, but we spent a lot more time on our back patio because of our umbrella!

Our winters are long and cold so we live for summer and fall nights like these. I’m so thankful to live in a beautiful place like this with my wonderful family.

Baby Henry 💙

Where do I begin? Becoming a father has been the greatest experience of my life. It’s deepened my capacity for love in way I think only fatherhood can. The first year was challenging in many ways (and uniquely challenging for dads), but it doesn’t compare to the reward of watching your own child grow and learn before your own eyes each day.

At the time of publishing, Henry is about to turn 1 year old and his personality is really starting to show through. He is distinguished. The determination and stamina of this tiny human is truly something to behold. He can roll, sit, crawl, stand up, and take a few steps on his own. He babbles constantly and says “Da Da”.

His favorite phrase is “tukka tukka”, which he says very seriously while holding one arm in the air. I can’t wait to hear what else he has to say. I love you, sweet boy.

While my wife Rachel was obsessed with the first year infant stage, I’m eagerly awaiting the toddler stage when he can walk, talk, and play. It’s already quite obvious that this will bring with it it’s own challenges, but those are challenges I’m more excited to navigate than the ones associated with infancy.

Everyone says he’s a perfect blend of mommy and daddy, but with more fair skin and a tint of red in his hair that he gets from grandma.

When Henry was born 5 days early, he was so small that we could use a burp cloth as a blanket and I could easily balance him in the palm of my hand.

End of the Year

This was certainly a year of change. It was a year of adjustment. As the year comes to a close, I’m so proud of everything my wife and I were able to accomplish in 2024 and I’m looking ahead expectantly toward 2025. Henry will start walking and talking, and we’ll celebrate his first birthday. More sleep is on the horizon.

We already have a number of home improvement projects planned for next year, but the thing we’re looking forward to most is spending time together as a family — perhaps even a growing family.

Professionally, I’m not expecting much to change. I’ll keep working hard to make Instacart Business a world-class online ordering platform for every customer. It’s unlikely I’ll take on any freelance projects. I am curious to see how new AI technologies will continue to disrupt the design industry.

If you’re interested in seeing how my business and personal life have taken shape over the years, check out all my annual reviews.