What's Cluttering Up My Crib

This has been a wickedly busy week - hence the light posting.

    The Simple Man is away for a few days. While my first thought at hearing this should have been to sob with anticipated loneliness, I immediately started craftily planning all the things I could do without him here. Like have some uninterrupted (if you don't count the monkeys) time to throw junk away. This is easier without him here for a few reasons.

Inevitably, we will come to grief over something I want to throw out. Mind you, I never go through his things, but there is a fair amount of owner-less items (particularly papers) that he didn't know we had, hasn't looked at in years, but is seized with the desire to keep once he sees them. So, mercifully, we have both been spared that scenario. The other two big reasons are that I don't have to cook dinner (the girls and I are perfectly happy with fruit and bread) and I'm relieved of the daily tidy up before he comes home so it won't look like I invited an army of awesomely costumed Mexican wrestlers to the house to practice. 

   I've been concentrating on one room at a time and it's been great. I also finally hit upon a formula that works with my eldest, who is a packrat. I read this suggestion on a minimalist/decluttering blog somewhere and can't remember where - so if you recognise it please tell me. Basically the idea is to put yourself in the mindset that if all of your stuff was taken and sent to a pawnshop or something, what would you actually buy back? This worked marvelously well on my 8 year old, especially now that she has some savings of her own. I used to go the William Morris route: "Have nothing in your house that you do not know to be useful, or believe to be beautiful." Somehow that doesn't work well for children. They think everything is beautiful and they're not at the useful stage of owning yet. It was funny because as she was putting things in the giveaway box she would say, "I really like this Mom, and it's so pretty, but I'd never buy it with my own money!"

    You know how you always have all this weird stuff that makes you scratch your head wondering why, oh why do you still have it? Yeah. Here's a partial list from this past week:

• Elaborate instructions on how to make a Chinese takeout container bag out of velvet. Gah! I hate handbags - what am I doing with this?
  

• 157 recipes for things too complicated to make
  

• An entire plastic grocery bag of the extra wooden bits left over from making a toy model
  

• Old computer manuals I've never even cracked open - seriously, if something goes that wrong, I throw it in the car and drive to my local and very helpful computer nerds
  

• About 15 computer games/programs left over from the archaic 90's
  

• 3 teeny tiny lamps I thought would make good nightlights...and my kids like to sleep in the dark

• Dried up highlighters out the wazoo, mostly left over from my college days that ended almost a decade ago
  

• Approximately 50 or so "pictures" drawn by my eldest, who has little artistic ability or interest (I say this  lovingly, she has mad skillz in building, from scratch, wood vehicles powered by electricity - so I think engineering is more her thing) and which consisted mainly of a bunch of creepy circle people. I felt a little bad about this, but we used to over-encourage her to draw because we thought it was good for her until we realized how much she hated it and preferred other things, so I only kept the few pictures that really came from her. Strangely, those are better than the others. Hmmm. Parenting lesson here somewhere.
  

• About 12 assorted cords: ethernet, USB, phone...blah, blah
  

• A ton of acrylic paints from my days when I wanted to believe I could do more than watercolours, ink and pencil.

And finally the crowing glory of my clutter:

500 Dollars!

    I found this money in various cards from our wedding and when we had our first child. I guess that explains why I was too wifty to take it out and actually use it.

What are some items you know you need to go through but your heart shrivels at the thought?

Comments

[Erin Kleider]

Ye gads woman...$500 is a pretty nice find. If you were wanting to get rid of it, you can feel free to send a little my way! But kidding aside, what a nice find. If that would only happen everyday.

I got a kick out of your daughter saying, "I really like this Mom, and it's so pretty, but I'd never buy this with my own money." In my head, I sort of imagined my daughter saying that with this added, "but I'd be glad you buy it with YOUR money."

Have fun!
It is sometimes nice to be just the girls!
Erin :)

[TheSimplePoppy]

Yeah, it IS kind of wonderful to find that amount of money!

I think your daughter is a little older than mine, once my kid's sophisticated cognitive abilities kick in I would definitely expect the "but I'd be glad you buy it with YOUR money." But for now, her room is totally clean and spare and I'll be harassing her to keep it that way until I lose my voice!

[Mark L]

I just started going through my stuff. Wow. What a bunch of crap. and I am a single guy in small apartment. It is amazing the stuff we hold onto.
Thanks for the blog post.
Mark
http://minimalistlifestyle.wordpress.com/

[Erin Kleider]

Yes, my daughter is probably older, but she has always been pretty sophisticated in that way. The girls in my family are shop-a-holics from way back so she got it by both nurture and nature. I am truly trying to become more minimalist in my shopping habits (I bought very little on our trip to Texas and San Francisco...I was proud of myself...but I took thousands of pictures) even if I will never be able to hold the title "minimalist," and I fear that it will be a painful transition for my 13 year old, well, really both the 10 and 13 year old. What I love is that my daughter loves shopping at Goodwill. It feels more ecologically responsible for me even if she does have too much. At least she's reusing.

BTW, I found a recipe for an all natural shampoo. I will have to type it out and send it to you. I think someone recommended to me that you put an egg white in your applesauce version... but I can't remember. Maybe better not to try it.

Erin :)

[TheSimplePoppy]

Goodwill is great. A lot of kids stick up their noses at buying secondhand - so it's pretty cool that she's into it and of course she is using something already made rather than buying, meaning it's far less of an impact. Minimalism might make more sense after having one's own place, and certainly after having a family!

Hmm, eggwhite might work. Sounds rubbery, though.

[TheSimplePoppy]

Hi Mark, good job going through your stuff now. Your older self with thank your younger self one day! And yeah, sometimes I look around and thing, "Would it be such a bad thing if ALL OF THIS just went away?" Thanks for commenting!