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- 6 | Toys
This is a big one. A huge one. Where do we even start? I dumped. It might not be the most effective way, but if I pull it all out and force myself to touch each item to either put it away, give it away, or throw it away, then I won’t overlook anything. I will force myself to decide. At least, that was my reasoning, and it worked for me. This method might not work for you.
Everything from our toy room/living room went into a big pile in the middle of the floor. I went through first with a trash bag, throwing away broken happy meal junk toys and toys with missing parts. Listen. Toy Story was just a movie. That plastic does not care and isn’t going to cry as it is thrown away. It’s stealing your time and your attention, and you’re done shuffling it.
Next, I took everything my kids hadn’t touched or seen in the last few months and started a donate pile. I did this while my children were home and awake, so they obviously instantly showed an interest in every single toy I was planning to give away. It’s okay. I wasn’t fooled. Six months of barely touching it was the measure by which I ruled that day. Everything that didn’t contribute to imaginative play was gone.
Once the broken and easily donated toys were gone, I got a little harder on myself. I made myself make decisions for my kids. (This part I did while they were gone.) Does she need this many Barbies? No. Does he need three buckets of Hot Wheels? No. Are all of these options overwhelming my children? Yes. Who bought them all of these toys?! Oh yeah, me! I can free my children from the burden of deciding what to play with. I can save us from hours of clean up time each week. I can help them! I can help me! Suddenly, I wasn’t feeling like the worst mom for donating some of their favorite stuff. I felt like a good mom, because I was making adult decisions that helped free their hearts. That’s what you’re doing. That’s the purpose of this.
This might not work for you either, but I wanted to include my kids a little. Here’s a game I played with them in our toy room to try and get them involved in deciding what to keep and what to donate. I told them, “Imagine all of the toys in this entire room are going to go away. You only have a few minutes to save a few before they are all gone forever. Which ones do you save?” I let them move the toys they wanted to “save” into one large pile. I watched which ones they grabbed first and which ones they skimmed over once or twice, looking for what was most important. Even if every toy in that room eventually made it to their, “save” pile, they actually helped me decide what mattered most to them as I watched what went first and what joined the pile last.
- 7 | Crafts
We have a craft dresser in our dining room. I’m not sure where you keep your craft supplies, but I do know this. If you’re anything like me, you’ve got too much of it, and it could all use a good purge. I’m the worst at promising myself to make these great crafts with my kids and rarely doing any of them. I’ll totally melt those broken crayons down into special shapes and repurpose them for a fun lesson with my kids. Except I won’t. I’ll just pick up two dozen extra crayons off of the floor when the entire bucket accidentally falls off of the table. Freeing up the crafty places in our lives actually allows us to be craftier. Less time spent managing the craft stuff. More time crafting. It makes sense if you ask me!
- 8 | Books
This is where you give yourself permission to recycle books that are ripped or missing pages all together. This is where you decide that you don’t want to clean up 200 books when they all get pulled from the bookshelf by the bored toddler. This is where you donate the old college textbooks that you have in that box in the back of your closet. Your local library might be taking donations. That pregnant mom in your small group might appreciate your What to Expect books. Goodbye, overcrowded bookshelves. Hello, books we might actually have the time to read because we aren’t busy cleaning up a million books.
- 9 | School Work Pile
If you’re anything like me, you don’t just throw away all of the school work papers or special crafts sent home with your child each day. I look through them and make a neat little pile in the corner of my kitchen. Eventually, that pile gets set on top of the refrigerator. And before I know it, that pile is so big, sheets start sliding off and floating down… making more work for me as I clean them up. Here’s our next step. Go through the pile. Decide what you want to keep, and recycle the rest. If you want, and you have some sort of magic free time, you can scan the sheets you don’t want to keep into a folder on your computer to save forever. (I have two Rubbermaids of school papers that I keep telling myself I’ll scan. I won’t. Those Rubbermaids will just keep getting pushed farther and farther back into the attic.) Take the time to go through your pile. If you’re too far behind, box the old papers, and start fresh with the ones that come in tomorrow. I have a feeling that’s not what a real minimalist might suggest… but what can I say… I am still a sentimental mom.
- 10 | Mudroom
We keep our backpacks in our mud room. It is also the room where I dump things like jackets that are too small and soccer cleats and dance bags. Take a few minutes to go through any cabinets or drawers in your laundry or mudroom space. Move any random tools or products that have migrated in from the garage back to their proper place. The same goes for dog leashes, old collars and grooming tools. Do you need it? Can you donate it? Why do you still have it? Where else could it live? How about someone else’s house?
