Enough is Enough
Cleaning up while kids are growing is like shoveling snow while it’s still snowing. I wonder if these words ring as true for your household as they did for mine. Fly Lady, webmistress of the tidiest domain in cyberspace (www.FlyLady.net), has a term for this C.H.A.O.S.: Can’t Have Anyone Over Syndrome. The problem in my home was not that I had lazy, untrained kids who refused to pitch in and pick up (not that I didn’t nag). Rather, our C.H.A.O.S. issue could be summed up in a single, untidy word: clutter.
Clutter came creeping stealthily into our home like upset ants. It formed hillocks and colonies in crannies and closets and on countertops. Birthday party goodie bags? Clutter. A trip to the Golden Arches for Happy Meals? Clutter. Backpacks spilling over with non-urgent forms to inform us that, yes, we should squeeze one more thing onto the calendar for-the-love-of-our-kids? Clutter.
The stuff piling into our lives uninvited and with no place to go was weighing us down. I felt drained, burdened, overwhelmed. I stopped inviting friends around because entertaining meant either shoving more junk into the closets or sorting and clearing all the excess, and I might have rather scaled Mt. Everest. It was as if our possessions, taking on a life of their own, were beginning to possess us.
I don’t recall the precise moment of clarity (though it surely involved bare feet crushing Legos like some tribal initiation rite), but I’d had enough. I wanted to enjoy our possessions again, to make our home a place of sanctuary, not chaos. I therefore had two options. The first involved a shot at stardom with a tour of our basement on the hit show Hoarders: Buried Alive. The second, for sanity’s sake, was to corral the clutter and restore order to our abode.
D-Day
Getting serious about our junk, we set a full Saturday aside for “D-Day”: Declutter Day. Enter the Hula-Hoopla, the mother of all purges. We piled all the stuff littering our home into the center of the family room—stuffed animals, unidentified objects, misplaced toys and all the clothes and appliances and knick-knacks that taunted us with the regret and guilt of “Shouldn’t have!” With the elephant inescapably in the room, we placed hula-hoops around the floor with labels: Give, Donate, Trash, Keep. “Keep” came with a caution: anything kept must be useful or sentimental and be put away. Thus, the sorting began.
There were a few tug-of-wars with the kids, I’ll admit—“No, you’ve never played with it!”—“But Mom, it’s (insert fluffy name of prized toy here).” More than once, we bribed the kids with small amounts of money: “I will pay you a whole dollar to get rid of….” But on the whole, we all pitched in and dug our way out of clutter, making no less than four stops at the local Goodwill.
The benefits were huge. As clutter receded, a tide of clarity, energy and order washed in. The kids felt the joy of giving their things away to genuinely happy recipients. Having too many choices of toys had overwhelmed them, and now they played more and appreciated what they had. Instead of “shouldn’t haves” sapping away our joy, our possessions were beautiful and—infused with memories and meaning—boosted our sense of happiness. Through thoughtful simplicity, we were no longer drowning in stuff. We were swimming in a sea of sanctuary.
Clutter Busters
THE GOBBLER: Our family pet, the Gobbler, lurks in shadows, hungrily stalking toys. When toys are abandoned on the floor, the Gobbler (a fabric bag with bulging eyes and a drawstring mouth) stirs and—munch, crunch—gobbles them up! Whenever he appears scratching and growling, the kids go into mad-dash cleaning mode to rescue their toys. The idea was modified from the “Gunny Sack” in Richard and Linda Eyre’s book The Entitlement Trap. When the kids want Gobbler to cough up one of their toys, they have to exchange three less appealing toys to buy back the one they covet. Eventually, the Gobbler regurgitates some very fine but neglected toys to the Overland Park Goodwill.
RANSOM BOX: “Uh Oh! You left it out; Mom picked it up. She’s got your stuff; you’re out of luck. To get it back you must do a chore, again it is yours just like before.” Thus reads the Ransom Box lid of blogger Larissa at “Just Another Day in Paradise” blog. For a free printable of her Ransom Box chore list visit http://ZitzManFam.blogspot.com/2012/07/uh-oh-box-chore-list.html.
USE A LABEL MAKER: “I like labels for two main reasons,” says Liz Indellicate, hospitalist and mom in Shawnee. “First, they empower everyone to know where things go and where to find them. And second, labels force me to keep on top of things and give away or store them when I see how many of an item we have. Labels make maintaining order easier when I have declared an area for everything.”
ORGANIZE ON-THE-CHEAP: Mommy blogger Jessica Hill is sweeping Pinterest with 100 ways to organize your home using dollar store items. You’ll be amazed by how far your dollar can stretch your storage space: http://www.MadInCrafts.com/2013/01/organize-your-whole-house-with-one-trip.html
ROUTINES: Thomas Moore said, “The ordinary acts we practice every day at home are of more importance to the soul than their simplicity might suggest.” Sometimes, keeping things tidy is as simple as the “Clean-Up Song” or a “Minute-to-Bin-It” after-play routine.
Wendy Connelly and her family of four are coming clean and uncluttered in Overland Park.