On our journey from stuff to barely enough; you can read about it here.We had come to a living situation even smaller than before.We discovered an adorable rental; 1,000 square feet to be exact, still the backyard was the biggest we'd ever had and we bought a small, movable shed for outside. We thought this would be doable, and gave away more things in order to strategically fit everything six people and two small dogs would require.
Can I tell you how difficult it is to decide what you need and don't? How to limit everything even the amount of underwear per child? Once a week laundry isn't possible with that sort of set up. It's pretty much impossible, I mean you don't even have a place to stash multiple clothes baskets unless you want to stub your toe a dozen times a day!
I'm complaining, I know, but there is a point to this.
After the holidays, a few birthdays and such my children had accumulated a few things. All parents are highly aware of the constant battle over toys. Putting them away, not losing them, keeping all parts together and just containing the mess! Almost all my children's things are hand me downs, pre owned or gifts. Ironically they don't even play with things I think are cool. And that's where I begin with another point here, do children even need all the stuff they have?
My siblings and I often discuss how very little we had as children. There was nine of us, and yet my parents obviously didn't think toys were important. We were usually tossed outside for playing, we had ONE swing set with three swings a few bikes between us, a few roller blades. We used a lot of sticks, a lot of acorns, and a lot of sticks. Sticks can be almost anything to a child's imagination. My parents always asked us to make a list for Christmas; I'm still trying to understand the point in that because we neve received anything we put on the list.
We loved going over to friends house's growing up; the amazing toys there. Things we only dreamed of owning. I always remembered playdates and filed away the toys I had played with for future reference. Often to compensate I'd make myself dolls out of sewing scraps, I even used corn husks once because I had read about it somewhere. Sometimes we had dress up clothes, cast offs from our parents. We had one ball, two baby toys, a few stuffed toys each, board games and plenty of books. My little brother for six or seven years running asked for a "Zorro sword" and dress up set every birthday and Christmas. He finally gave up asking for one around the age of twelve.
Now whether my parents had a bigger point here or just didn't care is up to you to decide. But let me tell you our children have stuff. And so do my niece's and nephew's. We love the idea of them playing with things we only dreamed of as children ourselves. The only problem is they don't share similar feelings about all the toys as I thought they would.
Here take a look.
Okay so maybe that's not a lot but I have had enough with it. It's all over the place. They don't play with half of it, they have favorite's. And I'm left picking up and or trying to contain to one place in our house.
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I had my older boys pick a few of their favorite things, I chose for my daughter since I know what she enjoys playing with the best. Everything else went into boxes to be put away for now. Maybe we'll rotate toys in six months. Notice I also labeled what I packed away, we hope to move soon and this will help me stay organized.
The improved result!!!!!
To me this feels better ! We refer to this room as the "toyroom" it's actually the third bedroom in our home. (Our children like to share a room for now, the new one co-sleeps with us. ) I haven't a picture to post but the closet in this room also contains our books, table toys and learning toys.
Growing up in a minimalist household helped me to really appreciate things and even see how throwing too much materially at my children isn't helping them at all. If they have to wade through piles of toys, if the toy thinks too much for them how will they ever develop an imaginative mindset ? Sometimes making do with what you have isn't a talent it's a learned skill. Or maybe you've just had enough.
