The Rookie Mama
New year, new gander at our old friend, “Minimalism.”
And it’s all the easier to find legitimate reasons to prioritize other, timely life things that render us unable to pause our family-of-six world and sort and toss all the donatable things.
My husband and I are aspirational minimalists, but not as disciplined in practice as we’d like to be.
Yet, on occasion we do try to bring our mantra to top of mind: ‘Our memories aren’t in our things but inside ourselves’.
We also understand that storage is oftentimes organized clutter – Why keep purposeless items in boxes ‘just in case’?
In case of what?
There have been events in our lives that forced our hand to downsize – Impending births of baby boys, moves, home renovations, pre-Christmas purges. But still – Life accumulates, manifesting itself a trail of breadcrumbs and Hot Wheels cars and LEGO sets and sweet-potato-spit-up-laden onesies and puzzles.
Therein lies the tougher part of said downsizing task – Convincing our little ones to be on board with decluttering; donating items they no longer play with to make room for the new and trusted and true favorites.
In the spirit of sustainability, our family does repurpose what we can – torn clothing that’s gone through four boys and is beyond repair sometimes has solid fabric pieces for patches or canning covers. Gift bags in good shape are neatly folded and sorted for reuse – The purpose of downsizing is not to unnecessarily buy new stuff. Au contraire, mes amies.
I often tell my children, ‘Close your eyes and picture your dream bedroom. I bet it’s not filled with junk.’
As much as it’s hard for adults to let go, it’s harder for children to do so – Sentimental attachment to knick-knacks runs deep.
But knick-knack, paddywhack, give these toys a home at the local Goodwill.
One tactic we’ve used with moderate success is convincing our children that toys we donate will be appreciated and loved by new families.
Toys that aren’t worth re-bestowing because they’ve worn out their wear are trashed or recycled.
At the end of these conversations, oftentimes we parents are the ones who are worn out.
Always a work in progress but baby steps.
And speaking of babies – Each time I was expecting a new little guy, I’d pore over their stored baby totes, shocked at how much I’d saved that wasn’t needed – Really, 20 hooded towels? – which thus gave me a perfect opportunity to declutter boxes of my own during each nesting phase.
How much do we really, truly need?
As a culture, we strangely associate our ‘stuff’ net worth with personal worth.
We fill our homes with stuff, stuff, and more stuff, enough linens and dishes and kitchen tools to provision a hotel, in addition to our family at hand.
When bored, we hoard.
We forget that what truly counts – what is most memorable are one’s life experiences, not things once owned.
Consider this, then read on for itchy statistics –
According to Becoming Minimalist, the average American home has tripled in size over the past 50 years, yet still 1 in 10 Americans rent offsite storage.
25 percent of Americans with two-car garages don’t have room to park cars inside of them.
Nearly half of American households don’t save any money but consume twice as many material goods today as were expended 50 years ago.
And over the course of an average American’s lifetime, a total of 3,680 hours is spent searching for misplaced items. This research found that up to nine items are lost every day – 198,743 in a lifetime.
We forget how freeing a decluttered life can be – Organization is wonderful but having less to organize is all the more tremendous. Associated costs of your time with maintaining such a volume of paraphernalia can be reduced.
Again, baby steps.
One room at a time, one shelf at a time.
Toss, donate, recycle.
Items saved should be kept with a true and understood purpose.
As for items to be rid of, there are more creative ways to accomplish this than yard sale days of old.
Items in good condition can be sold – or offered free – via a simple social media post.
Our boys recently took it upon themselves to sell several DVDs and CDs they no longer use in exchange for some spending money by selling them to a local music store.
We are frequent fliers to our hometown library – a magnificent way to meet one’s needs for free, then return the borrowed item without the burden of having to store the items oneself.
Baby steps.
We're making efforts daily to get rid of things we know we don't need; digital clutter included. We remind ourselves that our memories are inside us, not inside our things.
We get out and go on adventures, the best of which don't cost us a thing, such as exploring trails and nearby parks and beaches.
And so we imperfectly try, daily, to work on collecting memories – not stuff.
Makes you wonder whether consumer “'goods” really are all that good.
Now if you'll excuse me, I've got another Goodwill run to make.
I’ve just come across an unnecessarily large pile of more hooded towels.
As for those baby food-stained onesies – Into the trash they go.
– Michelle Cote lives in southern Maine with her husband and four sons, and enjoys camping, distance running, biking, gardening, road trips to new regions, arts and crafts, soccer, and singing to musical showtunes – often several or more at the same time!
No comments:
Post a Comment