Yesterday I told Jack if he got rid of 15 toys, I would buy him one toy that he really wanted. It was hard. He immediately went to the bin of Annie's toys & started pulling things out to get rid of. I kept suggesting toys to get rid of & all of a sudden they were his favorite, really special toy. He ended up doing really well & I got rid of the horrible, plastic Thomas train tracks that haven't been played with for a year, so he'll get his new toy.
Last night when Jack was asleep I went to the basement & filled a huge Goodwill box with even more toys that he won't miss. Now I just have to keep him away from the box until it leaves the house.
I've also made a few guidelines for myself. No more garage sale toys just for the sake of cheap toys. If it's something I think the children will still play with a month from now, then I'll consider it. But our house is littered with someone else's junk just because it was a dollar. And I won't buy any more clothes that I don't love. A $5 t-shirt from Target isn't a great deal if it makes me feel even more frumpy than I already feel daily. And, at the end of our toy purge, if Jack gets a toy, he has to get rid of 2 toys. We'll see how long I stick to these guidelines. I just don't want our house to be overrun with stuff that I don't like & is taking up what little space we have. Besides, Jack has more fun outside blowing bubbles & throwing rocks than playing with plastic toys.
All that ranting to say, go purge some junk from your life today! It feels good!
5 comments:
Here's something my parents used to do that might work when your kids are older. When my sister and I would trash our rooms and refuse to clean them up, my parents would give us a deadline to clean them. If we missed the deadline then my Mom or Dad would go in with brown paper grocery bags and "bag up" everything on the floor. The bags all went into the garage.
The rule was that the bags would stay in the garage for a certain amount of time (a few weeks?). If we needed or wanted something from those bags we could go out into the garage, get a whole bag (no digging through to find what you want) and put everything in that bag away. You then got to keep everything in that bag. If there were still bags in the garage after the two weeks, or whatever, then Mom and Dad would go through the bags and donate whatever they could and trash the rest.
It is a memorable system and it worked!
i think i could have written this entry. Right on Andi- PURGE!
Andrea - this is great, I hope that you stick to it! With our move I have been doing the same thing. Good job!
Jack tried to give away my shoes!
Good for you, Andrea! I am pretty good about throwing stuff away, but I am also VERY VERY good at buying garage sale junk....I need to really think about every purchase I make!!!
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