A week or so ago, Erica shared an AWESOME idea in the comments on Things a Mother Might Say When Helping Her Sons Declutter. I loved the idea so much that I asked her if she’d be willing to write it up as a guest post! If you’re at your wits’ end feeling overwhelmed by the sheer volume of STUFF in your kids’ rooms, this idea might be for you.
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Some background first, since we’re all just meeting.
My family of four lives in a dear old house of 1,100 square feet. Compared to the average middle class American, our house is wee and tight, but I taught in Japan for four years, so I oscillate between chafing at our limited space and marveling at how much space we have.
Regular purging is a must for us.
Emma is six and William is four, blessings both and wee clones of my beloved husband who is not one to get rid of things easily. Neither, alas, are his offspring, bless them all. Every book, toy, shirt, cup in the house has memory and meaning for one or more of them. Thus, purging is a burden of epic proportion around here.
Deep, heaving sigh.
Two years ago, I started a tradition of working with my kids to give away toys in the month before Christmas. It is So. Hard.
Especially for Emma, because how can she give up or send away even one of her baby dolls? They will miss her, they will need her, they will have their feelings hurt from the rejection!
Don’t I know they come to life and play every time we’re not looking! AGONY! (She has never seen Toy Story, and at this rate, she never will!)
Despite the resistance, we managed to get rid of some of the toys, but never enough to balance the Christmas gifts, party favors, spring birthday gifts, and sneaky hand-me-down toys from their cousins. By this summer, I found that clean-up time before bed had become an exercise in building piles and stuffing toys ANYWHERE just to clear a path from the door to the bed.
Something had to be done, something more positive than the last few tries. This time, I realized that the choices I was training my kids to make needed to be positive ones, focused not on what they would reject, but on choosing what they would keep.
So two weeks ago (after prepping everyone beforehand) I dumped every toy in the house on my living room floor.
That took a lot of work. Most of the toys were upstairs, some were hiding in the basement, several were under beds. Laundry baskets were helpful, and the kids did help.
Positive Tip Number One: Young children find almost nothing more charming than having all their toys dumped out in a different context.
Seriously, once my kids grasped the potential of all their toys in one place, they were lost in hours of intense play. They hadn’t noticed several of the toys in months, so doing this was like having all the holidays at once. While they were occupied, I sat myself down in the middle of the gigantic pile and began to sort it out into some order: all the blocks in this basket, all the cars in this box and the trains in this tub, all the stuffed animals in a huge pile by the door.
The more I sorted, the more they played.
I’ll be honest, it took a long time. I managed to almost fill a garbage bag with broken or worthless things that wouldn’t be missed. (Shh! Don’t tell!)
Positive Tip Number Two: Create opportunity for kids to find and choose order in their space.
Why should my kids want to clean up their rooms if they have no understanding of the benefits? Motivation is key for anyone, so I wanted to give them a chance to build their own desire for order. Thus the next step was to really clean their lovely, empty rooms. Perhaps I should have had them help, but teaching them to clean was not my objective that day. I wanted to charm them with the peace and order their rooms could have.
One at a time we brought them upstairs to show them their made-over spaces. Guess what? They loved their rooms that way! Without the mess and clutter, they were so nice!
Positive Tip Number Three: Have your kids choose the toys they are keeping, not the ones they are purging.
I was clear with both kids. If they wanted to keep the calm and order they liked so much in their clean rooms, they could only have as many toys as fit.
The end.
It didn’t matter to me which ones they kept. They both had bins, drawers, and toy boxes to fill. However, once the limits of their storage were reached, we wouldn’t be keeping anything else. After establishing the parameters, I took each child back down to “shop the living room” for what toys would fit in their rooms.
They didn’t shop without coaching, but they seemed much more energized by picking what to keep and deciding where it would go than by choosing what would leave.
Once the kids were in bed, my husband helped me whisk the leftovers into my car. Out of sight, out of mind. I took them to my Mom’s the next day to re-sort. Some stayed there at her request, some were donated, some went to friends or younger cousins.
Two weeks in, we’re doing a LOT better with managing our spaces. My kids have been playing HARD with the toys they kept since they know where they are and can find them.
All in all, the purging was much more positive, and I’ll be repeating the routine in December, but this time they’ll have one less tub to fill to leave room for the incoming bounty.
Erica Carlson is a full time wife, full time mom, and full time teacher in Columbus, Ohio. She would rather read, cook, chat, or play with clay than clean or pick up.
Great tips!!!! I only have one child (at least for now – 2nd one due in next couple of weeks), and he is still young enough for me to purge the toys when he’s in bed and he never notices! I can see how your technique will work when he is older.
Congratulations on number two!
i totally understand your daughter, in my 20s i put holes in the box so my stuffies could breath when i moved out of mom’s house into my marriage home….lol……
we do something similar if it fits, go for it..if not..you have to make a choice..the BIGGEST THING>>>>(you listening NONY, LOL) is to let THEM make the choices..i find it HARD and catch myself regularly…but but?????? there are a few that i’ve told them if they part with , mommy will keep in her trunk for them later on…the special SPECIAL ones…
it has made a world of diff. in my kids’ rooms to have a “space” to fill with a maximu
Yes! They have to be given control! I really feel like this is so important for children as they grow. Otherwise, how will they know how to make good choices when I’m not around?
I just did something VERY similar to this!! My 16yo was away for a week with our church and I took *everything* out of his room and painted it (he still had the “little boy” wall border up). This was no small undertaking. When he ran out of floor space for his “stuff” he started pushpin-ing his stuff up on his walls. He is now banned from ever possessing a pushpin in our house, lol. When I moved his dressers it was like opening a container of Chinese food – the stuff just EXPANDED into much larger piles. The only items that went back into his room was his furniture. All his stuff is currently in the middle of my living room floor and we are going through it together with my giving him no guilt whatsoever over his choices. He loves his room and his younger siblings are looking forward to their turn! Mom, however, needs a some time to recover, lol. Thanks so much for sharing – while my kids are a bit older and have different stuff, this will help me guide them when THEY have children.
You give me hope for the future!
I think your brainwave of making the selection positive, i.e. what to keep, rather than negative, i.e. what to part with, could be helpful to this adult child. I can see it would be easier to apply to a load of clutter – pick out what you really want and then, by definition, what is left is what you don’t really want, so out it goes. Thanks for the idea.
Thanks for extending it to adults. Cook book shelf, I’m looking at you for my own positive purge. 🙂
yes! i’ve just (as in two weeks ago) decided (as in not yet got the momentum up yet) decided to do this with my recipe binder! When i created the recipe binder, i put in every recipe card, random free brochure, label off of soup can, or backside of a coupon that happened to have a recipe on it, whether i had tried it or not. the end result was a handful of “go-to” recipes that i use all the time (to the point that those pages are stained, torn, and falling out of the binder) sandwiched in between a crapload of recipes that i wouldn’t even think to look for even when i am looking to try something new.
oh – the positive spin on that horrible chore of toy sorting. gaack. letting them pick what to keep versus the screaming mommy fit at getting rid of crap! Have to try this after I do the great toy sort into the piles and getting rid of broken and obvious garbage.
I wish you success!
Great idea!
Thanks!
I really need to do this. My kids (three) have such a hard time keeping their room clean! (They share a room, which adds to the disaster.) And while it doesn’t drive me nuts, my husband is a neat freak (yes I married one of those…lol!) and it makes him break out in hives (well, not literally). I have yet to find a solution that works for us.
Can I confess that the thought of dumping ALL the toys out in my livingroom makes me want to run away screaming? 😉
Yes, you can confess that. The day I did this, I had a morning appointment to make, so I actually dumped the toys and then left he house. My husband came hoe in the meantime and it was a shock for him. 😀
That is hilarious!! I am still laughing :). I am a single mom with 6 beautiful, sentimental,unwilling to part with much..darlings. You word your article perfectly! I will definitely be sharing..
Great post! I love the way you systematically worked through it all.
“Young children find almost nothing more charming than having all their toys dumped out in a different context.” So True! But then, like their Mama, my kiddos see potential in every. little. re-discovered. toy.
“Have your kids choose the toys they are keeping, not the ones they are purging. . . “shop the living room” — Love this idea! puts a positive spin on things. But I do still struggle with what to do when they would choose what I would not, and vise verse.
Thanks for the encouragement and motivation.
They rejected some things that we did salvage because they were OUR childhood toys. Otherwise, I had to remind myself, I want them to learn to make choices and feel power over their things and space. That was my priority but it wasn’t always easy to maintain. I know how you feel!
We’re in the process of something similar. I have a 12 year old and we both have ADD/ADHD so organization is always a challenge for us. I’ve finally convinced my son to choose the things that are truly special to him and part with the rest. Because we both need a kick in the pants to get going and some sort of pressing reason to KEEP going, I took several boxes out to the porch one day last week, knowing they were calling for rain. That is the FASTEST any purging has ever happened and now he’s motivated to keep going! One day–hopefully sooner rather than later–he too will enjoy a clean and simple to keep organized space! Good job moms…I think the hardest part is letting it all go, but I’m also at a point where I’m glad to see it go!!
Well done! I often use time crunches and timers at school with kids with attention differences. Then, at report card time, I have to turn around and use the same strategy on myself. 🙂
Thanks for this post. I have thought about cleaning out the girls rooms, “Clean Sweep” style. I would take every toy outside and give them a bin. When it’s full, the rest go to other little girls who don’t have toys. I would do the living room but it’s tiny and they have waaaay too many toys to fit.
Oh, there was nothing magical about the living room. It’s our biggest room, but that’s not saying much in our wee house. I did feel that I needed to give them a concrete vision of an orderly, not-over-stuffed bed room, so that drove the idea of dumping the toys in a different room. Pick whatever room works for your house if you try something like this.
I use to clean this way … but haven’t in a long time (like over 4 years – due to deaths, extra responsibility, and stuff like that) …
But I never thought of it in a positive spin. We are in full swing of rearranging the house and getting the 4 kids to fit into under 1000 sq. ft. (although I’m putting the oldest next door in the grandparents house). I’ll be emphasizing making sure they choose wisely in what they want to keep for their rooms, especially the two young ones, rather than purging to get rid of stuff so it fits.
What a great idea! Now this is why I read blogs every day!
I’m sorry for all your transitions and grieving. That stuff is hard, hard work. Blessings on your next step!
great idea! my kids are grown now, but that would have been a great help. i always liked doing things that were more positive. wasn’t always successful however. this idea is great:)
I can see this idea working for other areas of the house too. My whole family has a hard time getting rid of things.
Outstanding!! Why didn’t I think of that..???? It’s hard for us to get rid of things too, and somehow we have to break our emotional attachment to “stuff” and make the choice to keep order rather than piles and overflowing boxes. I’ve started the process but it is such a huge undertaking… I can’t seem to find the end.. lol
Yeah, finding the time. I totally took advantage of my teaching schedule to tackle it this summer, but I know there’s a Saturday in early December when we’ll repeat this. AHHH, time. Why is there not more of you?
I used to do that with my kids – the part about dumping all the toys in one spot, cleaning the room, and then putting some of it back. It worked well for us, too.
Yay! I’m glad I’m not alone.
I have done something very similar–dump all the toys in the middle of the room, and here are the empty boxes you can fill. They are only allowed to keep what fits in the box. Then whenever a new toy enters the house–whether Christmas, birthday, or by cousins sneaking them some hand me downs, something has to leave to make room for it. As long as I enforce that rule pretty strictly, the clutter stays more or less in hand, other than the paper clutter, which still has to be purged occasionally.
I love, love, love the idea of dumping the toys out in some other space than the middle of their bedroom, as it is inspiring and encouraging to have that clean space to move the toys back into. I wouldn’t want to dump them in the living room, but I have a game room/garage area that I would be okay with dumping them.
Aww, you’re good with that rule enforcement! I’m impressed!
This is great. I’m going to link to it in a short series I’ve been doing about “shopping your own stuff”. It will fit well I think, and I also really appreciate the wise and cheerful method of helping kids learn to reduce the toy pile! Good job!
Thank you!
I have stumbled upon something like this one time too. My daughter is a pack rat and one time her piles go so bad, I had spent and entire day cleaning her room since I knew it was beyond what she could sort out herself. At the end of the day I had all her toys sorted and out in the hallway and told her to pick 3 to 4 collections to keep and the rest were going up in our attic to be in “holding” for a while to see if she really needed them. Two days later after friends came over I went to her room to help her clean, when she said, “mom its already clean, since I only have 3 things it doesn’t take long” . She then said she preferred her room that way and all those “holding” items never did come down from the attic.
Awesome! Congratulations!
I just did this for the first time with my son’s room last month (we just put everything in the hallway). It worked really well. I want to do the same for my daughter before school starts. But, it wasn’t until reading this post that I realized this method might work really well for my closet. I’ve gotten much better in the past two years about getting rid of many excess clothes, but I still wear 20% of my clothes 80% of the time. I’ve been planning to turn the hangers all backwards, but I think a quick purge with this method first would be helpful. That’s now my plan for September. THANKS!
Ooooo, I should take myself and the closet in hand. Hmm. Thanks for the thought!
You have a lot more energy and patience than I do. 🙂 I just wait until they’re both in school and take to their rooms with a huge garbage bag. Hit Goodwill on my way to pick them up and call it a day. They have never once asked about a toy I’ve removed – but they always thank me for straightening up their rooms! They are 4 and 7, BTW.
I read some where that there’s an age when they start noticing. :D. I think we can still get away with this for awhile, but I’m looking ahead to when I could commit a major trespass on this. I’m just clueless enough to make that kind of mistake.
That is a FANTASTIC way to do it!! I wish I’d read this 10 years ago when I purged a ton of toys myself and made all the kids mad. Then I locked all the games and things with small pieces up in a closet that they had to ask to retrieve things from (they checked them out, sort of like a library– which did work quite well!) We purged my boys’ toys about a year ago, if only because they NEVER played with anything. What they have left— Legoes, light sabers and Nerf guns— they DO play with. Their rooms seem so empty but we realized there was no point in keeping what never got used! LOVE your tips! I will keep them in mind for this round of boys!
Wow! Thanks for all the comments! This was very cool to come back from vacation and find. Happy purging, everyone!
The “mini” version of this is what I use when my kids (9 and 13) have brought all sorts of stuff out to play with all over the house all day:
“Only pick up what you want to KEEP.”
They KNOW I will put whatever they leave in a bag to take to the Goodwill. Most of the time they don’t leave anything, but occasionally they do. I think this works best for OLDER kids like mine. It makes it easier for them to “let go” of junk when it’s time because constant, light purging is always an option. They’ll come to ME with stuff they want to get rid of. Every little bit helps!
I’ve tried this approach with my kids, but missing one crucial step… which kept it from ever working. I would tell them they could only keep “whatever fit”… and to a 3yo boy, that means anything he can cram under his bed or in any other hidden crevices around the room! I’m realizing I need to do this again, but before picking out the “keep” toys, I need to lay out the acceptable storage areas first…
I finally took the advice here and my dc and I cleaned the boys’ room like this post suggests.
It took all day. I sent photos of the living room to my dh at work. He was appropriately horrified at the height of the piles.
I was stunned at how little my younger boys wanted. My oldest (14) probably kept all his things(mostly books), but they really weren’t the main problem anyway.
This process is amazing. It was work-yes-but they did the lion’s share of it. My dd did help and I jumped in to help clean the empty room and sort items.
Thank you, Erica-I’m absolutely thrilled that we’ve learned a better way!!!
Yay! That’s wonderful!
Whoa! That is so wicke awesome! It was a lot of work, wasn’t it? I’m so glad it was good work, though. 🙂
I have literally just stumbled upon your blog. I want to say what a wonderful idea you had in turning a negative situation into a positive one. I will definitely be trying this with my 8yo and 15yo daughters. A huge THANK YOU !!!
LOVE THIS! I was going to declutter anyways. I call it, simplifying and investing in future fun times. We haven’t decluttered properly EVER. And this is coming from a mom who brought 11 trunk loads to donations ALL OF WHICH WERE USABLE! when we first moved out of our place we were in for 6 years. truck, back seat, and passanger seat were all FULLY LOADED with donations. Everything stained, ripped, broken zipper, all went to the garbage beforehand! I have been a hoarder! and have suddenly woken up one day, tired of THINGS. Tired of being boggled by organizing cleaning, sorting laundry dishes. And literally decided that day to give away two of our couches. And was going to go with 60 percent of my clothes. Since then I got into s&^t from my landlady who’s house was very disrespected and decided to give notice. For me, this is an opportunity for freedom, my goal for 40 was already freedom to declutter my mind and to simplify leaving more room for love anyways, so why not the entire house with me? I have many many things that are beautiful, expensive and SUCH A PAIN to simply maintain! plus I have never had a style. (I am a recovering addict, clean for a year and healing letting go of childhood traumas) With this being said. I have settled into a style that I adore. We are staying at a cousins place. From a gorgeous looking big, two level three bedroom into a basement. From not being able to afford rent, to figuring I can make a plan. My landlady had every reason to be angry, but she got abusive. I will not be talked to like that. I have given notice and now have until the end of June to get things out and to clean that beautiful place. I have taken off tomorrow afternoon and Friday to go to the old place and have rides ready to take donations and dump loads to the dump. I had been waiting (giving my power away) for my raise to go through before I did this. It came to a head for a reason, my freedom opportunity. The chat when I gave notice went well. I will get rid of furniture that is not being used (most) have already given away Some chairs I was overly attached to that actually mean little to me, to the cousin I will be staying with. And once those loads are gone, I will pull all my childrens furniture into our downstairs living room and tell them to fill them up with the store in the middle of the floor. I will not attach myself to the outcome but congratulate them on taking an interest on what they want in their young lives. We have found also that we are not ready for pets, it was the main concern ( and rightly so) for the land lady and my …discussion. I have many things to learn on simplicity. I am excited for the opportunity to have rushed at my already plotting plan. And I am very thankful for your sugestions!
I did something similar as a girl cleaning my room. I would make the bed and clear off every cluttered surface, floor, dresser, nightstand, and pile all of the stuff on the bed and put it away. That first initial cleaning was motivating for me as it showed immediate progress, then I couldn’t go to sleep until I cleared off my bed! I think I’m a naturally clean person. My problem is that I am a perfectionistic person, and in a home with three kids under 5, a hubby who doesn’t do any housework, and a thyroid disorder that sometimes saps my energy, there is no perfect to be found in my home. Progress and Little Bit Better, and That’s nice for now is what I get. I’d love to clean sweep my home and put everything on the lawn and only put back what I love, haha, because that would be lovely. But I’ll keep plugging away at it! I will keep this idea in mind though on the small scale. 🙂
Thank you for sharing this experience! It has given me courage and hope! I have been contemplating doing this exact thing with my girls, ages 8 and 4. I have been hesitant to do it because I fear that they will focus on trying to save every toy and that nothing will change. I imagine when I tell them to “shop” for every toy they want that they can fit into their room that they will ask about what will happen to the other toys. How did you address that with your kids? Did you just not mention what would happen with the leftovers? Did they try to shove too much on their shelves and other spaces in their rooms? Did you have to turn down a few requests to keep things that didn’t fit in the space? I am considering doing this for their clothes, too.