So, in the last couple of weeks I managed to do some kid de-cluttering.  No, I didn’t get rid of any of the kids, they’re all still here trashing the joint, but I saw that I needed to make room for new clothes and toys that had been coming into the house lately, and also take some steps to make my daily life easier.

My little boy has just turned 4, and likes to dress himself, but I had been wasting precious time in the mornings trying to explain to him that it’s winter now (I live in Australia) and shorts, T-shirts and sandals are no good. 

Sometimes the most obvious things stare you in the face for a while before you get it.  And I’ve been through this stage with my older kids so I should know.  All I had to do was put all the summer clothes away!

At this age, he’d grown out of most of them anyway, so I collected a bag of stuff for the charity shop.  Problem solved!  All that is in his drawers now are clothes I’m happy for him to wear now, that fit him.  The most I have to do now is help with shoe laces.

My two, two year old girls had grown a lot lately, so I’d bought new clothes, and I needed to make it easier to find their clothes too.  It can be hard to let go of good clothes, but if they’ve grown out of them, they’ve grown out of them.  With the girls stuff, the best things are offered to friends first who have slightly younger girls, before going to the charity shop. 

With a new puppy in the house who loves to chew, especially plastic, keeping the toys sorted out has been an issue.  My son received some lovely new toys for his birthday, and I invested in some extra clear plastic boxes – my favourite organizing items.  Yes, I do go on about clear plastic boxes – I just love them!

Clear plastic boxes – you can see what’s in there, you can stack them up, and the stuff inside them is protected from chewing puppies and other things I can’t think of right now.  I always buy the same brand, but in various sizes.  They are mostly the same size horizontally, so they stack up really well, but come in different depths.  They are about $10 each from the supermarket, but at a large variety store they come in packs of 3 and are cheaper.

One has train tracks (actually two – because we seem to have two different, incompatible train sets), one has Duplo, one has Lego, one has HotWheels and Matchbox cars, one has dolls clothes, etc etc.  There is a basket with dress up clothes too, which is popular lately.

I rotate the toy boxes, keeping them stacked up in the wardrobe, and having about 3 or 4 only out in the lounge room at a time, to keep them interested and limit the amount of toys that need picking up and putting away every day.  Some things stay out all the time, like the cars.

A whole lot of baby toys, no longer needing to be kept for younger children (I think I have enough kids now), went to friends/charity shop.  There was a weeding out of items which were broken, no good, too chewed up by the dog etc.  A special clear plastic box was allocated for my son’s favourite special new toys.  Some toys I’d been keeping from my older kids which are now suitable for the little ones have come out – including lots of books.

I have recently bought some new Ikea Billy bookcases for my office corner, (I’ll probably write all about that organizing adventure in another article), so this freed up a spare Billy bookcase for use in the lounge room.  It is now full of kids books, toys and videos.  Yes, I admit I still have VHS videos even though the video player died a while ago – too much toast posted into it or something.  I will face up to this at some stage I’m sure and make a decision.

I went through the books, and tossed out the ones I didn’t enjoy reading myself – hey, I’m the one that does most of the story reading around here.  Same principal as the clothes.  If there are only books that I like there, then the kids can choose anything and it doesn’t matter.

Whenever there has been a bit of a purge of stuff it has an inspiring effect.  Keeping things tidy is easier, we can find things, we’ve re-discovered some things we’d forgotten.  Some bad purchases are faced up to and tossed out – things that seemed like a good idea at the time but just weren’t.  If you’ve wasted your money on something, it’s still wasted if the dodgy item is still in your house staring at you.  Get rid of it!!

Now, my two older girls really need some help and attention with their clothes and belongings.  They are pretty good at doing it themselves, and I can just give them a box and say “fill it up with stuff you don’t want any more”, but they do enjoy it if I spend some time with them assessing their clothes, seeing what they need and so on.  Sometimes I find that they tell me they need one thing, and if I pay attention and have a closer look, I have a different opinion from them about what it is they actually need!

So, de-cluttering is a never ending cycle.  That’s the key to it.  Life moves on and you’ve got to keep moving with it.  Regular seasonal sorting and clearing of your kids stuff shows them how it’s done and gives them a valuable life skill.  They enjoy their own clothes, toys, books and so on much more when they can find everything because they are not overcrowded with things that are not longer useful to them.

Remember, if the task seems daunting, just commit to do a very small part of it to start with, just to get you going.  Once you make that small start, you’re over the hardest part. 

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