I've been down-sizing for a while; yet my greatest opposition to doing this has come from my younger son who never wants to get rid of anything.
After another frustrating discussion about this with my older son this morning, I formulated a plan, and got started.
First we took all, and yes I mean ALL, of their toys out of their room and into the space between our kitchen and dining area. I unpacked boxes and sorted the toys by type.
Next my younger son was given $10 of Monopoly money and told that he could buy ten toys from the "toy store." His sisters set up a cashier's station and he began to choose his "purchases."
I never would have anticipated this going as smoothly as it did. He chose monster trucks first; my rule was that if he chose a group of items like that that he could get ten of them for $1. He counted them out in a very civilized manner, the girls bagged them up, and he continued with his purchases.
After he had chosen his tenth item, he got to the end and realized that he had overlooked something that he wanted to keep. Instead of getting upset about it, he just put back one of his items and made a trade. I must admit that I was super impressed that he was so cooperative about the whole thing!
Shortly after, my older son came home from Taekwondo and chose his items. He remarked that when the stuff was in his room, he had thought he had wanted all of it. Yet seeing it in a different place somehow made him think differently. He actually chose only nine items.
The big bonuses of the day for me were that the two items that took up the most space in the boys' bedroom, the train table and tool bench were not chosen. Having four kids and too much stuff has taught me to love clear, tidy spaces!
Of course I am now left with handling the items that they didn't choose. I trashed the things that I thought were useless, put a few things upstairs for my kids' kids, and a yard selling friend is coming by on Thursday to pick up the rest.
I attribute our grand success to my method of making it fun for my little one, AND taking all of the stuff completely out of their room before going through it.
Of course it seems like a lot of trouble but if you have never tried it, you will be amazed to see how much more stuff you will be willing to part with using this method than you would have otherwise!
I do hope this post is an encouragement to you. If you have any tips that have helped you in this area, or find that you are able to apply this method successfully in your own home, please share! Thanks for reading!
