Fun Decluttering with Kids

fun decluttering

It is possible to have fun decluttering with kids!  Living with children can get cluttered. Kids love stuff.  They want things and are constantly given things to bring home. It can be stressful to have so much stuff but there IS a way to have fun decluttering.

The problem with too much stuff

I’ve always been a bit of a minimalist. I remember crying at Christmas because I had too many gifts. I moved so often in University that I learned how to purge things I don’t use. I keep nothing on my desktop, I like to have empty closets and drawers in my house, I love it when my fridge is bare and I don’t like having any emails in my inbox when I go to bed at night. This maybe why I practice bioenergy healing (I clear away blocked energy). And this is why I find it so difficult to live with the clutter a child brings into the house.

I can see the stress the clutter brings not only for me but for everyone in the house. Toys are tripped on, things cannot be found because there is too much stuff, time is wasted cleaning (or thinking / talking about cleaning).

The problem gets even more difficult when you take a look at the things in your child’s room and see that most items on their own are valuable. Cool lego, creative art supplies, good quality toys. But the volume of these items deflates the value of each item. A child will have a very short attention span when surrounded by so many choices.

Given this dilemma, I wanted to come up with a way to have fun decluttering.  And this is my plan.

How to have fun decluttering

I’ve had many conversations with the kids about their stuff. After much frustration on my part, I asked them to be part of what I call “Social Experiment #1”. The purpose of this experiment is to see what will happen if we get rid of toys and clutter. In this experiment, I will pack up all of their belongings (except for 5 small items they can keep), and put them all away in the shed for a month. In this time they will not have to hear me complain about all their stuff and their cleaning up will be minimal.  Together we will write a blog to document their time as clutterless kids.  Each blog post will ask 4 questions.

  1. How do you feel without your stuff?
  2. What did you do with your time?
  3. Did you miss anything?
  4. Did you bring anything (new or from the shed) into the house?

The kids are so excited about this.  They like the idea of being famous on a blog and getting to write how they feel about their decluttered rooms.  They enjoy talking about it with other kids – it does sound kind of crazy.  So far, they are having fun decluttering!

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