This year I’ve been on a de-cluttering slow-burn. Feeling dismayed at the sight of teetering piles of junk on many surfaces, toys and books permanently strewn around the girls’ room and a general sense of house dishevelment, I decided on a plan of action to fix it all up.
My first move started without a lot of pre-planning by taking out their desk’s third drawer containing the girls’ artworks from the last two years or so and sorting it into chronological piles for each girl, discarding work that wasn’t worth keeping and putting the big paintings aside. Over a couple of nights, perhaps four hours in total, with the girls’ help for some of it, I re-homed all of this into display books I had previously bought for the girls: Rhea’s are red and Lara’s are green. I had previously sorted the girls’ early artworks into these matching books but hadn’t done so recently. This was a satisfying job and we all admired the results afterwards, which join the other books above their desk.
The next week, Steve and I sorted out the top of their desk. This is a long desk we had had built along a window in the dining room which over the holidays had accumulated books, craft bits and pieces, newspapers, toys and anything that had been cleared off the dining table. We also sorted out the seven or so drawers below the desk, putting aside puzzles and games that the girls have grown out of, which created room for their Christmas present games and those that they actually use.
The week after that I sorted out the girls’ chest of drawers, culling stockings and painting smocks that don’t fit them anymore, putting some craft activities away that I know they’ll never use in practice, and asking the girls to make piles for the dress-ups that they’ll never wear. This created an empty drawer next to the one they keep their underwear in. I decided I’d move their socks to this drawer instead of leaving them in the chest of drawers that greets you when you open the front door, confronting you with overflowing drawers of their socks.
Another week I focussed on two or three square metres along the girls’ bedroom window. I asked the girls which toys they still wanted and put aside the rest, and in terms of bigger toys they easily agreed to give away an old doll’s house that they had painted a couple of years ago and one of the two double prams they have. I cleared the mess from their small square tables and found homes for the debris that had been there, including the instructions to make the lego that Lara received as a Christmas present and couldn’t build for a while because the instructions were lost. Someone picked up the doll’s house from the nature strip within a couple of days, and it made space in their room for the one double pram.
I organised for the carpet to be steam cleaned, which lifted the house’s cleanliness again, and the week after sorting out their bedroom floorspace I tackled the girls’ bookcase. I had given away some of the books in it, putting away the best ones, last year, but it wasn’t a very thorough sort-through and there were still a lot of books that the girls had outgrown, resulting in the bookcase being overflowing also. I took out all the books, shelf by shelf, and sorted them in to piles for keeping, storing and putting in the community library we made last year. From this I had a very big pile of French magazines for ages 3-7: I let the girls choose the special ones they wanted to keep and took the rest down the road to donate to the French playgroup. It was a metre-high stack. I ended up with a similar-height stack of best quality children’s books for storage and another one for the community library.
The girls had painted a square of plywood a blue colour matching the house and Steve drilled it on the top of a white bedside table we found at the second-hand furniture shop at the tip, and the girls and their neighbour had drawn signs saying ‘Community library please help yourself’ on some coloured sheets of paper, decorated with drawings which I finally made the time to get laminated. I washed down the top of the plywood with sugar soap and Rhea helped me stick on the signs when the tabletop had dried before we filled the library with the books. They were of good quality and suitable for a range of ages from two to seven, including some about raising children and Robyn Barker’s Baby Love.
That was a particularly satisfying weekend. The community library was welcoming and friendly: I put various sized yellow and blue rubber ducks amongst the signs as a finishing touch and left the door slightly ajar when no rain was forecast, so people could see what was inside. Some books have since been taken, including by a friend and her daughter, which was also nice.
Last weekend I went through the rest of the chest of drawers with the overflowing socks, and collected many odd socks and many others for smaller children, now outgrown by Rhea and Lara. I have given some of these away along with some other outgrown clothes, and moved the socks to their new home, which drawer they fill up. I spent an hour with the girls going through their hairclip/hairband/necklaces drawer, also overflowing messily, into a pile for every day, a pile to throw away/give away and a pile for special occasions. From that drawer we collected many necklaces that the girls have made out of beads that they no longer want, so I’ll put the beads aside to donate to a group that might find it useful for a bead-making activity. We cleaned out three drawers, moved these things into their new homes and sorted out the singlet drawer between them. I took the stockings and outgrown school jumpers to the school’s second hand clothing shop last week.
There are still overflowing piles in our house, now along the corridor at the front door where all the items to be sold or donated are bagged or piled, awaiting their futures.
I have a few more weekends of culling planned: one weekend going through the storage drawers under each of the girls’ beds, I might do the laundry cupboard after that, and I could help the girls go through their own one ‘special drawers’ in the long desk that are too full to be useable. After these few weeks the girls and I are planning to have a garage sale for the excess and I’ll let them keep any money made.
We have all appreciated the space and order that is emerging from this process. And I think the process is as important as the result, because we are making the order; it’s not being made for us, and from that we are getting a feeling of satisfaction. It’s part of a work ethic that I learnt from both my parents, and from mum at home. Maggie is also good at culling and creating order, and I think it’s an ongoing effort which also needs storage space and a place for everything. When I have sorted things out for a few more weeks I’ll know whether we have enough storage space to make it work. For now, it’s good to be on the journey.
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