Letting go of your stuff

14th August 2020 - 1 min read

Tip #1 Don’t listen to people who say decluttering is wasteful (sorry Mum!) Better for things to be shared and used than stored away ‘just in case’

Tip #2 If you feel like you’re a slave to your stuff but don’t know where to start, Marie Kondo’s book ‘The life changing magic of tidying up’ is a brilliant tool to help you choose things that ‘spark joy’ in your life. 

Tip #3 Get kids on board with ‘sharing’ their belongings (some tips might help adults too!). For more expensive things like Lego, you can give them an incentive to let it go by agreeing on an amount to pay them for a set. Then help them find another second-hand set they’d like to build or they can save for something. Here are some ideas to help kids part with their stuff:

• Give them incentive to let go of their more expensive toys by paying them eg Lego sets etc, so they can save money for something they want… maybe second-hand too?

• Tell them their soft toys are bored and lonely and want someone else to play with them (it’s probably true!)

• Remind them that they’ll likely never read a book twice and that sharing their books means the book will be read more than once

• Ask them which of their toys their friend might like

• Keep an eye on what your kids do and don’t use. If they haven’t touched something for 3 months or so, chances are they probably won’t pick it up again. (But be kind… some kids attach more strongly to their stuff and find it difficult to part with it… we don’t want to create more problems by forcing them!)