A weekend viewing of The Minimalists new documentary appropriately titled, Minimalism, spurred a renewed vigor to purge the unnecessary things in our home. Sunday afternoon found my husband cleaning out his side of the closet and chest of drawers. By national standards we already own much less than the average American, nonetheless…
We still want less. Sweeping through the closet I heard the words, “Hey, I’ve been looking for this” multiple times. Even with all the less that we possess we still have a ton of, for lack of a better word, crap. It’s insane to me that we literally lose things amongst more things. When we’re losing stuff within our stuff we have too much stuff.
I’ve already embraced the capsule wardrobe—however I have to admit that I’ve gone slightly over in my shoes—I can’t help it! I’ve been donating and selling pieces that I no longer love or use and have even been cleaning out the kids closets.
Nonetheless there has been a space in our home that has become a point of contention. The basement, i.e. the playroom, i.e. the abyss. For years we’ve been pointing our children away from things and towards experiences, but for some reason the stuff that they own seems to be multiplying.
Monday came and we dropped our son off at school, returned home, put the baby down for a nap, rolled our sleeves up, grabbed a bunch of trash bags and waded into the abyss. We dumped every basket and organizer on the ground and weeded through the mess. We spent an hour bagging up anything and everything that was broken or grown out of. We reduced their toys by 50 percent, reorganized their play space and dropped all of the good off at our local donation center.
We both exhaled and hit a high-five! Woohoo, we have less, we can actually see the ground in the playroom! We felt accomplished, but a little nervous about the potential fall out. We picked our son up from school, told him that we have cleaned the playroom and we now expect him to keep it clean. He ran downstairs and immediately went to his Lego table and began his after school ritual of master building.
It’s been two weeks since the massive de-cluttering of their play space and here’s the kicker, they haven’t even noticed the missing toys. They haven’t once asked, “Hey where is this or that?” They have no idea that there was a massive toy theft during nap time.
I feel a little sneaky, but now think I could actually purge even more without them noticing. Spring is around the corner, the days are going to get longer and warmer and they’ll most probably ditch the playroom for the backyard. When they do I’ll be ready with trash bags in hand!
Photo Credit: @daiga_ellaby