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I’m talking with Liza today. (Actually, back in January.) Things we discussed in this episode:
- How the “take it there now” decluttering strategy is a game-changer for her because of the chronic illness and exhaustion she faces.
- Helping kids embrace the decluttering mindset in a way that doesn’t traumatize them.
- I also answer this question: Whether it’s time or space, my disorganized portion of my life keeps creeping into my organized portion of life. In the process, I am starting to feel like I need not to have fun or goals— I get so spartan that I have no inspiration. How do you bring your balance back?
Oh my! This is great! I have 5 kids, and my 8 year old is also not potty trained ! I did NOT know that breastfeeding reduces dopamine . That explains a lot as I’ve been nursing for over 9 years with only a 3 month break. I also have chronic illness so this resonates with me. I love the take it there now method and especially the fold it and put it away when it comes out of the dryer method! Still cheating by starting another load before the dryer is done. One thing that helped me is having the children have their own small laundry baskets for clean clothes down stairs so everything is sorted immediately when it comes out of the dryer and when they want to get dressed if their are no clothes in their room they just go look in their clean bucket. No more searching through piles of laundry and me feeling guilty about it.
I loved the section for helping/teaching the child to containerize items in order to prevent overwhelm and help them focus on not randomly donating things they’ll miss later for the sake of donating, but to help them see which items they would pick last…are the ones that should be considered for donation, (especially if the items don’t fit in their designated space.) Example: focusing on just one item in the room at a time (like all the toy cars), putting the ones they love best in the container first. Focusing JUST on cars keeps them from rabbit-trailing and putting other objects in the container for the sake of keeping them, instead of focusing, gathering, and seeing that they have a gazillion cars but they only really like 5 or 6 of them best. Brilliant strategy!