Our Simple Life

Simplifying

We have too much stuff. I've been busy going through things and evaluating what we really need and have used in the recent past vs. the "stuff". Most of it I bought because it was a good deal, and some I had intentions of using but didn't put enough thought into beforehand. Also, there are a good amount of toys and play things which are overlooked all the time which need to go. Things we don't need I've either donated to a thrift store whose proceeds go to a women's and children's shelter or to our library. It's been a long process but I'm getting it done and it feels great!

I went through our computer games and found about ten that don't get used on any regular basis or they are similiar to others we have. I took them to the library we go to weekly and donated them so the library can check them out to others (they're all educational). I also took several videos to the library that they can checkout.

My homeschool cabinet in the living room got a good going-through last week, let me tell you! I donated probably 50 workbooks and teacher lesson plan books to the library (to sell at their booksale). I didn't get rid of these because they're not great resources or because I didn't like them. I let them go because they don't fit my teaching style and they've just sat there and collected dust and will continue to do so no matter our children's ages.

I emptied our files in the file cabinets this morning and chucked anything that wasn't necessary to keep. Old medical directories and healthplan BOOKS! I'll take those to be recycled in a few days. It also reminded me to get the old phonebooks out to be recycled. Other things I threw away were all the printouts from sick visits for the kids and misc. medical paperwork I don't even know why I ever kept. LOL

The other day M (our 7 yr old daughter) asked me if I'd show her what was in my two Rubbermaid "keepsake" containers while J (our almost 4 yr old son) was napping. So on Wednesday we spent an hour going through them together. I used the time to really look at the stuff I was keeping and decide if I really needed things in those containers. I kept anything that belonged to someone else (my great grandmother's apron, my great grandfather's zippo, etc.) as well as things like my baby book and quilt. I went from two containers to one, I am happy to say! Some things were things others might enjoy so I'll donate them to the thrift store but a lot of it was thrown away.

M and J were styling my husband's and my hair the other night and he mentioned the excess of hairclips, headbands and the other hair accessories. I totally agreed! I didn't even realize how much we had until he said something, though. It's crazy how we get used to things and they don't strike us as being too much after a while. Anyway, yesterday morning I asked M to go through the 3 baskets of hair accessories and choose out the ones she wears on a regular basis and get rid of any she didn't. She's getting very good at letting things go. I was really proud of her that she didn't argue with me about how she needed all of them. She also did the same with her Barbies. She had eleven to begin with and now has six. :) They were ones that she never plays with and we both think six is plenty, don't you? 

Yesterday I went through their blocks. They have tiny-size Legos in a case which I kept and the next size up Legos which I also left alone in their original container. In addition to those, they also have some preschool size blocks which I down-sized into a smaller container (I donated what didn't fit). Last but not least they have those connecting pattern blocks which I halved into another small-size container and again donated the excess.

I feel on top of it at this point. The only area that stands out to me that we have an abundance is children's books and we'll tackle that next, but there's no rush as we do have two small bookshelves neatly holding them (one in their room and one in ours). It's not that having a LOT of books is a bad thing, but in our case, we visit the library once a week and check out around ten books per child so they're reading new books all the time and don't enjoy many from our home library. I'll be very selective, though, about which ones we do donate to the library and have M and J as my little consultants.