Thank you for bearing with my through yesterday's whining. Despite waking up at 3 am realizing I might still be at a doctor's appointment when the school bus arrives outside my door today and not being able to go back to sleep for an hour, I feel better today than I did yesterday. I've even already solved for the school bus problem! Yay, me.
As I'm currently moping around wishing I had an energy level commiserate to vacuuming, it's funny that this is the week that I've been selected to write about keeping up with kid clutter for BlogHer's Life Well Lived series. Ha ha ha ha ha. But actually, I do normally hate clutter with a passion, and as soon as I feel better for realz, I'm going to attack the following.
The Question: What are your best tips for keeping the clutter at bay with kids in the house? How do you help your kids develop good organizing skills?
The Answers:
1) Have one kid. I'm sort of kidding. On the serious side, kids bring home a steady stream of papers, pencils, wads of gum, extra shoelaces and various cheap plastic crap they will declare essential to their existence. This stuff multiplies exponentially per child. If you haven't started your family yet and you seriously hate clutter, just be aware of how your personality may or may not jibe with a big family. Kids are cluttery. Yes, we can try to combat it, but a certain amount is normal and reasonable and it's not fair to try to contain them within the bounds of an adult.
2) Make sure everyone has containers for his or her stuff. Downstairs where the school-related clutter backs up most, we have a homework box and a crate we use to house all the library books. Yes, there are two things sitting on the kitchen floor at all times, but at least the piles are minimized. We have a few other baskets for my husband and me -- one is for bills that haven't been opened yet and another is for bills that need to be filed or shredded.
3) Act on piles every day. My husband and daughter get sick of me walking around the house, picking up their shoes and tossing them in the hall closet. See also removing recylables to the garage immediately, tossing school assignments not keep-worthy and demanding my daughter decide if yet another wacky wall-walker is necessary or expendable. However, I've noticed in the weeks I don't do that, the piles take over every surface of the house within a mere three days, putting algae to shame.
4) Make garage sales pay off for the child(ren). In exchange for ruthless clean-outs, I let my girl keep the proceeds from our yearly garage sale/lemonade stand. It's her version of watching us sell stuff on Craigslist and use the money for something else.
5) Find a personal hand-me-down recipient. If your kids know where their outgrown clothes are going -- to which specific kid -- they're much more likely to relinquish something than if it's just going in the Goodwill pile. At the first sighting of a too-high hemline or extra ankle exposure, remove said item of clothing and put it in a sack for your favorite little neighbor or relative or friend.
6) Hang shelves. My girl has a snow globe collection that made it so frustrating to dust in her room that I finally begged my husband to hang some shelves on her walls. It's so freeing to be able to access the surface of her dresser -- I can't even tell you what this does for my soul. For some reason, clutter on the floor is infinitely more annoying to me than clutter on a shelf. Why? I do not know.
7) Group like objects. We have spaghetti jars full of googly eyes, pipe cleaners, beads, paint brushes, etc. in the basement, along with an old dresser full of craft stuff. Being able to see what you have makes it less likely you'll buy the same thing twice. I try to teach my girl to look first before we buy anything. Nobody needs 42 tubes of Elmer's Glue. No, you don't. Back away.
That's pretty much it. I feel like my house is overcome with clutter most days, even though it's not as bad as it could be. I find making a swoop around the house every afternoon before dinner does a lot to calm my soul. How do you handle kid clutter?
Here's what Alicia from Get Buttoned Up had to say at BlogHer.
As always, I want you to win some stuff. This time you can win an iPod Touch and a $50 iTunes gift card. So go enter! (and hurry, I was late on the pick-up and the sweepstakes ends TOMORROW MAY 16)
