I've been overwhelmed with my house lately. We simply have too much stuff, I just can't manage it all. Frankly, i'm sick of being so stressed out over the messiness of my house and it seems like every day I spend hours cleaning for it to look trashed the next day.
I'm sort of on a minimalism journey. I wrote a blog post about this back in 2015/2016ish about how I was inspired by minimalism and living a simpler life with less stuff. Ever since that blog post I will say that i've been pretty conscious about keeping things minimal, but as always the inventory of items that are in our house continuously ebs and flows from less to more. When we got married we had an influx of items. When we had kids, even more things arrived.
Now that I've been a parent for 5+ years i'm able to take a step back and realize what I really need to parent and also what I can live without. Baby #3 will be getting by with the bare minimum because i've realized how little babies really need. I'm also determined to downsize all of our wardrobes and only buy what is essential for this baby as well.
So this week i've been really been thinking about something that is SO incredibly hard for me to declutter, and that's my kids toys. They all serve some kind of sentimental value to me. I think about how I carefully selected them for birthdays or Christmas gifts. I think about all the money i've spent on them. Or the worst: When I finally am able to donate something, Hudson will see it going away and get SO upset and hurt about it. Even when he hasn't played with the toy for over a year.
The reality is is that i'm drowning in kids toys. It's hard for me to keep our living room cleaned because there's always a ton of play food scattered around that isn't being played with, or a million other little pieces of some other toy. And honestly most of the time the toys aren't being played with anyways. The truth is, my kids really only gravitate towards a couple toys that they really love. So who is this benefitting? The kids don't play with them, and i'm constantly cleaning up the mess.
There are so many studies out there that actually show that less toys improve creativity and also encourage kids to play longer and more often.
So my secret mission is to declutter as many of their toys as I possibly can. I'm not getting rid of them immediately, but i'm going to put them away in our basement to see if they are missed. I'm going to keep toys out that encourage open ended play such as our building blocks, magnatiles, wooden train tracks, cars, art supplies, and baby dolls. Everything else will be packed away, possibly only temporarily, but maybe forever. I'm anxious to see how this experiment will affect the kids and what they will do.
I'll keep you updated.
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