My mom is in town visiting and has always been so helpful sorting my kids’ clothing. I would ask her what I should do to organize the clothing better, and she would always calmly say “you have too much”. Wow. So I could be more organized if I had LESS? Not rocket science but it was mind blowing for me. So it’s not a good thing to have MORE and MORE clothes in the house?! I had already applied the KonMari method to my clothing – but could I possibly find an application to my kids’ clothing, when they couldn’t tell me what truly sparked joy for them? (You have to read Marie Kondo’s books to get the humor here).
Today I went through the kids’ clothing with my mom (really we had time for just the 4T clothing for my middle daughter). It took SO MUCH TIME. But in the midst of it all my husband and I got motivated to purge other things in our house, and my oldest daughter caught the fever and started purging things in her room. Once in the groove, stay in the groove – and we did for a couple hours.
So the two bags…
…one for throwing out and one for giving away to a charity (i.e. Pickup Please a.k.a. Vietnam Veterans of America or to our MOPS consignment sale at our church). The stuff that we kept had to find a home, and that home needed to have room (it couldn’t be put back in an overflowing bin).
My mom told me about her parents who had 11 kids – they were super good at continually getting rid of things. Disclaimer: I think this may have not always been a positive impact on the kids, still I’m impressed to think about how they managed. MORE space for kids LESS clutter. I only have three kids – can’t I manage to fill two bags with things to throw out and/or give away, at least a couple times a year? How about you?
Have Less to Have More 