My Room-by-Room blogging buds and I are talking about kids’ rooms today.
Kids’ rooms.
Hmmmm. Month before last, it was the master bedroom and that was traumatic enough.
Now let’s add Mommy Guilt to the mix.
I have purged and re-arranged and organized and re-organized my kids’ rooms many times in this never-ending deslobification process of mine.
I’ve learned a lot, but haven’t mastered much. Here’s the thing. The rest of the house is mine. Perhaps they will one day need psychotherapy, but I often refer to “my” dishes, “my” carpet, and crumbs on “my” couch.
Their rooms, though . . . are theirs.
And I’m good with that. Possibly too good with that. I have an amazing ability to avoid these cluttered spaces and pretend they don’t exist simply because I don’t have to go in there regularly. (How I am able to pretend the clutter in my own bedroom doesn’t exist is my own issue for psychotherapy.)
The main thing I have observed in people whose kids’ rooms never get this way? Mama helps/directs them to clean their room every . . . single . . . night.
Ouch.
I have observed/learned/accepted this, but I have not put it into practice. At least not for more than a three-night-spurt before it completely slips my mind and I suddenly realize it’s been six weeks since I last thought to be sure they cleaned their rooms. Our Chore Charts have helped a lot, but even those tend to fizzle during extra busy and distracted times of life.
But things are better. Hugely better than pre-blog. Their rooms still get out of control (and have never looked like a magazine picture), but . . . they can go for months at a time being completely walk-through-able.
Yes, that’s a word. And yes, that’s an accomplishment.
Today, I’ll share the thing that has helped prevent/reduce the Extreme Disaster/My Child’s Room is a Bio-Hazard Issue.
Limit the Stuff.
When we did a major re-organization of my daughter’s room last year, I was ruthless in my quest to get rid of ANY toy that she didn’t actually play with.
I’ve personally realized that A LOT of my own Slob Problem was due to my Love of Random Stuff NOT being combined with an Ability to Handle an Excess of Random Stuff.
Most kids are also that way.
If their room is a foot-deep in strewn-about-and-stepped-upon toys, they’re likely spending most of their time in another room. Y’know, since they can’t find anything to play with in their room.
Not only have I donated/sold/given away huge amounts of their stuff, I’ve also significantly slowed the flow of stuff coming in.
As a former garage-sale-a-holic, I bought countless (literally . . . countless) toys for pennies (literally . . . PENNIES) on the dollar.
The deals were great, but the results were not. If they had a different mama, it’s possible that they could handle huge numbers of toys, but God gave them me.
And the reality was that even though it seemed worth a measly quarter to see their eyes light up in my moment of motherly indulgence, my eyes glazed over and my heartrate increased as I stood looking into their rooms. Their rooms with carpet I hadn’t seen in months.
I stopped going to garage sales. I made a point to be more specific and purposeful both in our own gift-giving and in directing loved ones who wanted to buy them gifts.
As I said above, a HUGE part of my own changing process was my realization that not only didn’t I need all the stuff I had, but that my personality/Slob-Brain/whatever you want to call it . . . can’t handle it.
I do not have the ability to keep a huge amount of stuff organized. And that’s okay. I’d rather live with fewer things (that I’m actually able to enjoy) than everything-I-could-ever-possibly-need . . . but not be able to find anything I because it’s one big pile of junk.
I can’t guarantee that your kid won’t grow up to be on Hoarders. I’m not sure what the defining moment is psychologically that causes people to end up on that show.
But I can say, without a doubt and as a tried-and-true expert in the area of Personal Experience with Too Much Stuff . . . that keeping five items under control is a thousand times easier than keeping five-thousand things under control.
You’re the mama, and I know that you can figure out how to apply this concept to your kids’ rooms, but because I had many, many more words running through my head on this subject (including some practical tips on how to reduce the stuff in your kids’ rooms), I’ll be writing more on this subject tomorrow and perhaps even the next day.
Don’t miss those posts! Did you know you can have my posts delivered to your email inbox everyday for free! Just sign up below!
Check out these other Kid-related posts:
Mama’s Laundry Talk is sharing about Getting Children’s Laundry Under Control
An Oregon Cottage is giving advice for transitioning from a kid’s room to a teen’s room.
Stain-Removal 101 is sharing tips for cleaning stuffed animals.
Sarah says
Not My kids… I have never spent all day in their rooms cleaning and throwing out bags and bags of “stuff”. Never have I found apple cores in drawers or my good pair of tweezers that has been missing for three months and that is why I have been trying to convince everyone that the unibrow is back… My kids never sneak upstairs with a plate of pasta and not bring it down till I find it under their bed mixed in with shoes, and clothes and that school book I have been shrieking about for weeks..
I have one hoarder and one pure slob in one room.. and I know that if I shape them now while they are still in the beginning stages… they won’t grow up to have one of those houses that has 3247013 cats milling around outside..
Thanks for this post! it motivated me to actually stop screaming about it and do something. Keep them coming!
nikki says
I feel you Sarah. I just noticed the lid to a dairy queen ice cream cake on my kitchen floor. That means that some one’s child (surely not mine) has smuggled a quarter of a cake to her room. I don’t know whether to be upset about the smuggling or about the fact that this means we are out of cake
Christy says
My kids get VERY upset when I tell them it’s time to get rid of toys. VERY UPSET. But when there is so much, they don’t play with anything. I think it’s too overwhelming. Thanks for the post. Can’t wait for the next one!
Patty [email protected] says
We struggled with that, too, when the kids were younger. I kept the rest of the house in tip top shape but I couldn’t keep up with those kids’ rooms! I can’t tell you how many times we reorganized, tossed, rearranged, etc. – anything I could think of to help the kids keep things organized. My dad was over once and said to me: “I can’t believe you let your kids keep their rooms like that.” Ouch. I was trying! Really, I was.
I’m happy to say that they both grew up to be fairly tidy adults. Whew!
Kristie B says
Cleaning out my daughter’s toys is traumatic for me–I attach such value to the physical thing. One of my big goals as a parent is for her to realize that stuff is just stuff, and you can still remember the stuff fondly if you’re not surrounded by it.
Keep the faith, sister 🙂
Wendy says
Here’s what I did to organize my son’s room and he does pretty well putting stuff away (when I think to tell him to).
http://diyknitter.com/2012/03/10/decluttering-challenge/
Jena says
I worry about my kid(s), mostly because my husband is a worse slob than me. I always feel so proud when I get a surface cleared off, but it never lasts because he piles stuff on it, and I can’t clear his stuff. Every now & then I’ll get a huge pile of it together and dump it on his side of the bed and tell him to deal with it before bedtime. That won’t happen now, as our 17mo can now climb onto the bed, and shredding paper is one of her favorite activities. All the stuff piled on the pretty table by the couch? Every now & then I have a meltdown because I want to clean and there’s so much he’s asked me not to mess with that I feel my hands are tied.
I’m glad you brought up garage sales, though. We sued to love going to garage sales, but yes, we always brought home way more junk than I would’ve liked. Granted, some of that junk I wish he hadn’t bought has come in useful, but I’m not sure that we still wouldn’t have been better off buying it new, on an as-needed basis.
Know what? I’m going to go take care of some dishes now.
RLR says
Stopping by this post, and a couple of others on your site, because – while the kids are away at “Grand Camp” – I am paring down and cleaning up my kids’ rooms. They are 6 and 8 1/2 – they have a mom who can’t keep the clutter under control – and they get so emotionally attached to “stuff.” I can’t do it while they are home, and having to do it in the space of a school day is just too overwhelming for me.
As Christy mentioned above – when it’s too messy, they don’t play with anything. I’d rather have the things they love where they can use them and keep it all under control. We’ve had some success with this plan by creating an art area for our daughter – right next to our dinner table! It’s the first place she goes when she gets home from school – and because it’s organized, she manages to keep it fairly neat. I tidy up about once a quarter – mainly because two of the bins hold school papers.
Longest comment ever, but just want to thank you for helping folks like me get the clutter under control. I am one of those who looks at it all and freezes because I just don’t know where to begin. Thanks to your posts and your e-book, the kids are going to start helping me out a little more!
Rachel says
As the slobbish child of very neat patents I know I drove my
Creativeme says
Careful.
I know without a shadow of a doubt, some of my attachment issues with stuff (very emotional and real) stem from my parents “cleaning” my room while I was away. I was traumatized and told to suck it up. Some of the things that I “didn’t ever play with” were things I were treasuring, keeping clean and special and preventing harm!! I kept a close eye on everything after that, and as a young adult I kept acquiring more and more! I know I was one traumatic event from being a full fledged hoarder (thankfully stopped at pack rat/slob)
So when I see my sons rooms sooooo messy that they are crying in frustration, I ask them if I can clear it out. Then I toss broken things and garbage, and sort like things together (which makes a huuuuge difference). Then I ask THEM to fill a box or laundry basket of things they don’t want or need anymore. Then I select a few things that I don’t see them play with and ask them if I can pass those things onto other more needy kids (if they say no, I let it stay). I don’t want them to put the same trust issues and fear of loss on their stuff.
One son likes to keep everything and collect interesting artifacts. It’s chaotic but each thing has meaning to him, so I try to ignore it in his own room. He is old enough to learn what having too much costs on his own. I try to lead by example and keep the rest of the house under control (except my office, we won’t talk about that right now) LOL
Krysten says
I am a very routine oriented person. Part of our morning routine is that my son, with my help, has to clean his room in the morning before he can watch TV. Because it’s part of our routine there’s usually not a struggle.