Today I cleaned out the big boys' bedroom. It was awful. I think I filled an entire wheelie bin with rubbish.
I realised again how much stuff the kids have that they never even touch. Our project for the school holidays is to play with every toy in their toy cupboard, play every game and do every jigsaw puzzle. On top of that we want to see if Joel, Micah and I can read every picture book on the shelf. Nathan's job is to see how many of his chapter books he can get through. This is no small project and will ensure that I don't neglect the kids. I'll need to play with them, otherwise the toy cupboard that I just cleaned out will be out-of-control messy again.
We don't need any more stuff! Please don't give us anything for christmas!
[Actually, some itunes money would be nice!]
Did you do all the cleaning and tidying or did you involve the boys?
ReplyDeleteIan and I have a running joke at the moment - that whatever we most don't need will be given to us as a farewell / Christmas or "Secret Santa" gift. We don't need pens, cups or bags.
So far Ian has been given pens (by students or their parents), a mug (student) and a quite nice, but not needed laptop bag (staff farewell). I got a mug with matching coaster in a "Secret Santa". To be fair, they're all good quality items, but they're things we just don't need right now when we're moving and already have more than we need.
Fortunately for some other events, we were asked what we wanted (store gift vouchers when I left work and Ian was given some games on his wish-list).
Noted!
ReplyDeleteLaetitia - I involve the kids to an extent. But they are unwilling to part with anything, which is disasterous for the cleaning out process. If they don't see that broken toy thrown away, they won't miss it.
ReplyDeleteMoving frequently is good for eliminating stuff! Also the school my husband works at in Tokyo has a twice yearly garage sale - if you tag your own stuff you get a percentage of the sale price. Great incentives for getting rid of unplayed with toys and unread books (small houses and frequent moves help too!). We often go through the boys stuff and put things away that they don't play with and hide it in another cupboard - we figure if they don't notice it is missing, then it isn't worth keeping and we get rid of it.
ReplyDeleteSimone - one day you're going to have to help them get "in touch" with the emotionality behind why they're keeping broken stuff so they can see that the stuff isn't important but dealing with the emotional baggage is - otherwise you're going to end up with a bunch of hoarders on your hands.
ReplyDeleteSorry to sound preachy but I'm saying this as a 30 something who's been slowly learning this lesson as an adult...one who's moving and culling yet again (lost count of the moves since 1997). Sorry, I have no pearls of wisdom on how you get this through to kids as my own parents didn't try it on me - I'm now trying to help them. :-)
Wendy - we had a real estate agent tell that the way to reduce stuff was to move every 5 years. At the time I thought he was mad as we (like most I guess) tend to get to 3 days before the removalists come and say, "It doesn't matter what it is - pack it!"
These days I can see the wisdom of that approach. Of course the downside is that we tend to still keep things - the packing boxes. :-)