The art of decluttering doesn’t work so well on young ones who’ve inherited hoarder genes

CNA Lifestyle

The art of decluttering doesn't work so well on young ones who've inherited hoarder genes

In this week's Chubby Married man, Portly Papa column, Aun Koh discovers the difficulty of downsizing and de-junking with two kids.

18 May 2022 08:58AM (Updated: 08 Jul 2022 05:01PM)

If any of you lot follow either my wife or me on Instagram, yous'd know nosotros moved homes very recently. For my wife, who planned the layout of the habitation and created a dream kitchen with our architect, this has been a peculiarly stressful final couple of weeks. It'southward as well been stressful for our kids, who have only ever lived in the sometime place. Our oldest is 8 and nosotros've been in that business firm for almost a decade.

The motility does take major upsides for the kids. My oldest is thrilled because 1 of his best buddies lives in the aforementioned development we've moved to. My daughter loves the multiple (yes, multiple) swimming pools. She's also excited to scoot to school in the time to come (assuming that we tin can actually go her into the primary school around the corner).

The new home, though, is considerably smaller than our old place. Nosotros were lucky when we built our sometime home – we were able to get the plot ration waived and nosotros took the opportunity to clasp out a off-white amount of infinite without sacrificing style nor functionality. And, thanks to very smart architects, our old place had loads of congenital-in storage. The new identify, while nice, is quite cookie cutter with almost no built-in storage. In terms of square footage, it'south also a adept 25 per cent smaller than our old home.

All of this substantially translated into a clear need to downsize. Which, for a family unit of hoarders, was a very painful exercise. Allow me clarify, it'due south been especially painful for my wife Su-Lyn. Not because she had to give up a lot of her things. I hateful, she did, but in our family, she actually has the lowest propensity to squirrel things away. Maybe information technology'due south because she is the most un-Golem-like of united states all, but she ended up being the i stuck with reminding the balance of usa that we needed to do some serious decluttering.

Simply hither'due south the matter with kids and decluttering. Information technology's pretty hard to practice. Considering while a child might forget nearly a toy (or a game or a volume or even a sweater) for a while, if you lot remind him of it, and and so say something along the lines of, "so, tin we donate this or requite it away?" or fifty-fifty worse, "I think we should throw this away," that toy besides of a sudden becomes his or her favourite toy. Because all things spark joy when you're young.

Decluttering queen Marie Kondo wrote, "Keep just those things that speak to your heart." My daughter would exist the offset to tell Ms Kondo that every unmarried 1 of her frilly dresses, her plastic tiaras, her stuffed toys, her wooden fruit, every single Lego block, her collection of countless plastic eggs, her storybooks, her ever-growing collection of hair accessories, all of her bangles, necklaces, and other (false) jewellery all speak to her heart. Knowing my little girl, she'd probably harrumph and exhibit some oftentimes-practiced side middle if she ever did go the opportunity to run into Ms Kondo in the flesh.

Su-Lyn did endeavor her best to weed out a lot of the kids' things. The expert and bad affair about young kids is they abound so fast. That means they outgrow clothes far likewise soon. Which is keen when y'all're trying to pack only what fits, but damned depressing when you offset doing the mental math on how much these kids take costs you over time. In the packing madness, we discovered that almost none of T1'south pants actually fit him. This as well explains why he's always wearing shorts that looks like a 1970s athlete (i.eastward. far too short for public outings). A good forty per centum of T1's wardrobe has at present been donated to clemency.

On the other hand, T2 has a wardrobe full of princess dresses, many of which have been donated to us by other friends (whose own little girls have outgrown them) which she'due south yet to grow into. During the packing process, they filled one wardrobe box all by themselves – a scary rainbow-coloured box of polyester, frills, sparkles and unicorn dreams.

The funniest practice (for me at least) was when Su-Lyn attempted to have the kids declutter their stuffed toys. I will say openly that the kids are very spoiled – grandparents, godparents, friends and we have all enabled building a Doc Moreau-level menagerie of real and mythical fuzzy, cuddly animals over the concluding eight years. Also, because T1 has severe dust mite allergies, as much as he loves cuddling stuffed toys, he really shouldn't, because he always ends upward with itchy eyes and a runny nose. So, supermom tried her best to have the kids work with her to divide these fuzzy animals into "keep" and "donate" piles.

Once once again, Ms Kondo writes, "You lot should let your kids experience the selection process by touching all of their toys. It's also important how they throw away their toys. They can earn a stronger sense of valuing things when they throw things away with respect and appreciation." Swell sentiment merely harder to do in practise. When mommy had laid out all the stuffed toys, the kiddies went through them, hugging each in turn and taking the ones they wanted. The remainder were left out in a large stuffed toy bin, earmarked for donation. Over the adjacent hour, however, every single i of these fuzzy little guys quietly migrated to the kids' chamber. I approximate the kids felt that every single bear, pony, bunny, and other creature sparked joy in them.

In the wee hours of the night, my wife had to do her ain chore of culling the animals, keeping the ones she felt the kids truly loved, curating a few other special ones, simply quickly boxing the rest away -- "Out of sight, out of mind" a much simpler and more than applied philosophy when it comes to kids.

The art of decluttering doesn’t work so well on young ones who’ve inherited hoarder genes

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