Decluttering Kids' Stuff

 As I mentioned in the last post, I've been on a major decluttering/organizing kick lately.  But I've realized that a major source of personal stress as well as relationship conflict occurs around kids' stuff and kids' habits.  Tiny Boy leaves stuff EVERYWHERE.  Part of this is personality, part of this is ADHD, part of this is bad habits that arose as a consequence of the aforementioned.  If I nag him, he will put things away, though that means shoving them somewhere I am also disinclined to like.  Part of this is simply he has too much stuff (toys in the basement, toys in the family room, books and junk in his bedroom).  He tends to play in family room; if the mess is behind the couch it doesn't bother me as much as if it is in front of the couch and I can see it while I watch TV or from another room.  LG, at 17, doesn't have the toy problem but a shoe problem (like, the shoes come off near a chair and stay there) and a glassware problem.

This is a longwinded way of setting up the fact that I would like to get rid of stuff that Tiny Boy has outgrown/doesn't use.  He has periodically allowed me to give away toys to other kids we know or to his old preschool.  Mostly he keeps everything (i.e. he has a BOX OF BOXES in the basement, he has board books in his bedroom, he has a large Fisher price dollhouse that he has literally not played with since we moved into this house almost three years ago and only a few times (this was LG's at one time, who also rarely played with it).  

I am thinking of buying his toys from him.  Is this crazy?  Like, a dollar for things like stuffed animals and $5 for a larger thing, or for a grocery bag's worth of small stuff.  It seems completely counterintuitive, given that he is likely to buy some new toy, but it would be something that he wants and uses as opposed to stuff that he doesn't want to use but also doesn't want to play with.  In the meantime, I'm using my  mother's approach of just grabbing some of the actual junk/garbage and throwing it out and if he remembers at some point he used to have that thing I say "hmmm....I haven't seen that in a while."  

Thoughts?

  

Problem Solving and a Book Review

As I often do over the summer, I had a version of 'organize my house' on my to do list for the summer.  Because after a year of being home all the time, what with 'remote learning' for both me and the kids, everything was sort of a mess.  And the mess that would have been at work....was also now at home.

I checked out Real Life Organizing by Cas Aarssen, whom I now know has an HGTV show, which is generally NOT MY THING.  But as I worked through her book I have to say I had a proverbial 'light bulb' moment.  She has a quiz in her book that breaks down organizing types into four 'clutterbugs' (also NOT MY THING).  And while the quiz itself came out wrong for me....once I read the four types, I realized exactly why my office was a mess*, why my kid's messes make me even crazier than my own, and how to solve my problem areas.  Apparently I am a "cricket" (again, not what the test said but what I recognized in the description) who likes visual simplicity and organizational "abundance" (lots of sorting!).  And apparently crickets are often perfectionists whose organizational impulses are disrupted by not having the perfect system....so they do nothing (large piles to file later!).  I also realized that I do not need to have literally everything I'm working on at the moment in a pile on my desk.

(Yes, I'm a bit manic right now.  Let's call that 3 hrs sleep.  Long story)

The result of all this.... my main desk is completely stripped of piles.  And the vertical file I already had on my desk contains only clearly labeled folders for the major book projects I am *actively* working on (not the ones I will get to some day, and not the manuscript from the last book that I don't need to look at anymore).  While I still have the main pile to go through, I am committed to making 'good enough' (that is, not really sorted) folders for the moment and just stuffing them in my filing cabinet (which is an actual nice piece of furniture) and going back for fine tuning....sometime in the future.  And when I ever get back to my actual office I will not stack my materials but use a vertical filing system.  

Beyond this organizational realization, I have also figured out that sometimes I just need to buy the right stuff (like the vertical desk filer) instead of using what I have on hand.  So buying new containers for my freezer that are sized appropriately might eliminate the bags of frozen peas falling out literally every time we reach in for a carton of ice cream.  (I hate my fridge. Hate. But I'm not ready to spend money to replace it.)

Finally, Tiny Boy was out of chocolate almond milk, which he apparently binged on this week, and I did not have time to go to the store.  So grocery order built around milk.  Because it's worth the delivery fee and the tip for me not to lose an hour of my life.  Yay!

* So actually an objective observer of my office would not say it's a mess.  They would describe it as neat with a monstrously large pile of things to file that gets moved from flat surface to flat surface.  Same at work.  I am apparently a piler, but I don't actually want to be a piler.

Evening Routines (Redux)

I've been thinking about my own night routines and what could be tweaked, partly after reading BJ Fogg's book Tiny Habits, which I so enjoyed, and partly because as we're re-emerging from strict pandemic lockdown life and as my kids are aging, my evenings might look different than they have for a while.

For the first time probably since LG was born I have time in the evening that is generally mine.  The amount of time varies, partly depending on what the kids have going on and if I need to be involved in it.  But it occurred to me I should think more strategically about how I'd like to use evening time so I don't just end up watching TV (not that I think there's anything wrong with TV! I could just do other stuff TOO).

Some things I would like to make more time for:

• Doing art.  I like doing paper collage type stuff but sometimes forget that.  I also took a weaving class recently and loved it.  Again, need to remember that's a thing I can do, even with a few minutes to spare.  I want to think about having an "art night" that I can just schedule on the calendar, whether that involves doing art as a class or on my own.
• Doing puzzles, with or without kid involvement.  This works better when we can leave a puzzle out which is challenging with the cats.  I'm looking into puzzle furniture options.
• Reading for "fun," though this is mixed, as I read so much for work that sometimes I just don't want to read a novel because it's not "fun."
• Taking walks in the evening, either outside or on the treadmill (I climbed Mt Fuji on my treadmill courtesy of a video!).
• Evening adventure with Tiny Boy (like going to campus and feeding ducks)

The challenge for me is (a) remembering that I do have this time to use for 'leisure' and (b) matching the activity to the amount of time, the energy, and the kid context (like, I might have time to do a yoga video but that's not going to go great if Tiny Boy is jumping around the living room and honking on various horns.  I swear).

For those of you who have similar pockets of non-kid down time, even if only 15-30 min, how do you remember to make good use of it?

Bedtime Revisited

Piggybacking on SHU's recent post that touched on bedtime, I thought it worthwhile to revisit the bedtime antics around these parts.  Longtime readers will recall sleep was a MAJOR issue in my house, circa 2012-2015.  (The short recap:  Tiny Boy had major sleep issues that eventually ended up with us seeing a multi-disciplinary sleep clinic.  At 3.5 he was still waking up (and therefore waking me up) upwards of 3-5 times most nights.)  Sleep is mostly not an issue at my house anymore, which I attribute to him aging, moving to a larger house (we no longer share a bedroom wall), and me dealing separately with my own insomnia.  For the record, he does take 1 mg melatonin.  

Bedtime by contrast has been a recent source of conversation though not major stress.  Until recently Tiny Boy required me sitting in his bedroom until he was almost asleep (something that began at 3.5!)....which was getting dragged out because he really wasn't able to fall asleep until 9:30/9:45.  And if I didn't sit in his room he called me back, so we instituted a later bedtime with reading to self policy.  (He's 9 and also seems to have fairly low sleep needs....only about 9 hrs per night.  He's up before 7 most days.)

Right now, here's what our evenings look like:

6:00ish dinner

6:30-8:00 either whole family time (like a movie or a game night or going out for ice cream) or, more frequently, each of us doing our own things.  LG often has theater rehearsal in this timeframe.  Tiny Boy sometimes goes outside to play with a friend in which case I read or putter around.  One night per week Tiny Boy and I do baseball together. Even less frequently I might take a walk or have a drink with a friend (either via my own teenager or a hired babysitter).

8:00-8:30 harass Tiny Boy until he finally goes upstairs to get ready for bed.  This is an ISSUE and one that might need to be resolved via a clock for ADHD type kids.  By this point in the day, his medication has worn off and he finds all the things to do.  Like, I say it's time to go upstairs and suddenly there's a LEGO project that must be done right now.  Often he's legitimately hungry.  I'm trying to be practical and not resentful about all this.  Natural consequences:  I will not read a word after 8:45 so if you want a story...  And, on even more protracted nights:  I will not be tucking you in if you are not in bed by 9:00.  Occasionally he compares his bedtime routine to a friend, who seems to go to bed around 10 or 11 (I'm not sure this is legit intel) and I've explained that her parents do not read to her (I know this for a fact) and she really goes to bed on her own.  Also, different families, different needs.

Tiny Boy really likes stories and snuggles and all that but I am (a) tapped out by 9:00 and (b) would like to spend some time alone with LG.

One night recently he took a 40 minute shower at which point I almost shut off the main water valve to the house; the bathroom was literally dripping water from the walls and we had A CONVERSATION.  He also lost all reading time.  Given how much he likes baths/showers, I'm only letting him take them if he's upstairs by 8:00.

9:00 say good night; Tiny Boy reads in his bed.  Spend time with LG (usually one episode of Community or something that LG likes, most recently Inside, edited down to songs LG thought I might enjoy).  9:20/9:30 say goodnight (again) to Tiny Boy.  Perhaps some more time with LG or quick house clean up.

10:00 LG and I upstairs (or me upstairs and LG doing teen things downstairs)

All this is to say, OMG so much better than when he was little.