Hacks for helping to organize your stuff |
 |
Organizing your crap....I mean treasures Since this is the first week of Spring, I thought I would update and ‘reorganize’ this post that I did several years ago. Here are some tips to tackle some of the most common clutter culprits. Toys Try to have an organized system so that putting toys away is straightforward. My dad used to say “a place for everything and everything in its place.” He did NOT follow that adage, but it is a good one. In other words, know where an item came from so that it can be put back where it belongs. If you can’t do that, you possibly have too many toys and you should take some of them out of circulation.
Art work It is always a delicate balance figuring out what to keep and what to toss when you have a budding artist in your life. You want to value their creativity but there is only so much room on the fridge. There are picture frames perfect for kids' art. You can easily change the display and they store up to 50 pieces. But even that is finite for a prolific artist When it is time to make room for new art, what happens to the old stuff? The choices are recycle (a much kinder word than throwing out,) save, or give as a gift. If something is getting ‘recycled’, get it out of sight quickly. You don’t want your kid to find their art crumbled in the trash. Another option is to take photos of the art which can be kept in an album or stored digitally. School work For the things worth saving, each child should have one expandable file folder per year for things that are flat. My kids had one folder for each grade, as they got older the things that were saved morphed from art to school papers and projects that were keepers. For Lauren, my actress, that was where we kept programs and newspaper clippings. The files have limited space. Have your kids be part of the committee that decides what gets saved. At the end of the year we always had a lot of fun going down memory lane by looking through the folders. At that time we were able to do some further culling; not everything needed to be kept. Barnacles. Life can get messy and it isn’t always the kids who are to blame. My mom used to refer to items that took root in places they don’t belong as barnacles. A barnacle is a form of marine life that is sticky and hard to remove. It finds a suitable surface to attach to and might not move for the rest of its life. The pair of socks that you took off and are on the coffee table for several weeks? Barnacle. The infant swing in the corner that no one has fit in for a year? Barnacle. A good first step to spring cleaning and organizing your home is to find the barnacles. This is often fairly simple and satisfying. It just takes a little bit of attention. If there was a barnacle contest. We win. Photo below! The first thing that people tend to notice when they go into our garage is Brownie, the toddler sized paper-mache gorilla who has been taking up residence on a high shelf there for almost 30 years. “Brownie” was created by Lauren’s first grade class. It was part of a time intensive class project that ended up on display at a local mall. When the school year ended there was a drawing to see which lucky student won the right to keep Brownie for ever and ever. Lauren was the lucky winner. She was beyond delighted. Mom and dad weren’t quite as thrilled. For years, when we would do the occasional garage clean up, she was still not ready to part with him. Now it is as if he is simply part of the garage. Like any good barnacle, he has taken root and we barely notice him unless someone spots him, does a double take and asks the usual "What on earth?..." The garage is full of many other objects that we likely don’t remember we have and don’t really need. Brownie is just the shining example. At least we can manage to fit our cars in (which probably makes ours better than many). To be fair, if my husband was left to his own devices, the garage would be immaculate. The big clean-up In most couples there is usually one person who is much more comfortable with clutter than the other. Our differences become even more understandable if you look at where we came from. When she died, my mother in law had left everything in perfect order. She had even taken photos of her art and had written down information about each piece, the artist and the story of how she had acquired each piece (such a gift!) Dealing with the things in my childhood house after my parents were gone was the other extreme. Neither of my parents were good at getting rid of things. My father had a workbench full of all sorts of unfinished projects. My mom claimed that she wasn’t a packrat, but she was a kindergarten teacher and as such she had kept piles of worksheets and odd stuff that could come in handy for a future craft project ( think toilet paper tubes, egg cartons and old magazines.) The house was filled with generations of letters and photos, newspaper clippings and the occasional treasure. There were shelves of dusty old books dating back to as early as 1892. It took my sisters and 3 years to clear through things. Do yourselves and your kids a favor. A little organization is a positive thing.
Set yourself up for Success Oath’s Developmental specialist, Mona from Sparks Wonder, offered some extra tidbits
More suggestions from the Oath community Oath’s Nurse Alice * We live by stations/"homes" - putting toys/blankets/socks/laundry back in their "homes" before doing screen time, guests coming over, and/or going to bed. Nina, a mom in the Oath community says I’m an organizing fiend and all I have to say is people need to let stuff go! Inability to downsize stuff is a main reason spaces get cluttered. If you are feeling the need to keep everything it will be hard to re-energize a space. LET IT GO! Craigslist is a great place to post free stuff to get it out of your hair. My motto is “Use it or Lose it!” Dr. Alexandra, part of Oath’s Mental health support team shared The "touch it once" rule has been a game changer for me and other folks with executive functioning challenges. I don't always follow it but it makes a difference when I do. The idea with routine or mundane tasks, rather than push it until later, make a decision right away. This has helped a lot with mail, emails, and clutter. Here's more about it if you're curious: https:// |
 |
No comments:
Post a Comment