Hello and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John Payne. Over these last months, there's been a bunch of conversations that many of us have been having and I certainly have been as well about decluttering. Now, one of the ways in which to declutter, which I think is a really good tip, is that we need to normalize decluttering for our kids so that they don't feel that it's directly targeted at them, that they're losing their stuff, because that can be upsetting, it can just feel unsettling to a child and just not good, and we can face resistance and all that comes with that.
So one of the things that I've been talking to a number of parents about is decluttering, first of all, and the first step is to do a declutter with our own space, which is pretty much just our own, like a kitchen, for example, I know kids help out in the kitchen, but it's largely an adult domain in most families. So why not start with decluttering a kitchen, decluttering cupboards, a pantry, cleaning everything out of the refrigerator and wiping it all down and putting it all back just in the right place, or the freezer, organizing and decluttering always kind of come together, don't they, because the decluttering allows us to organize in a way that is so pleasing, isn't it, and particularly when life is pretty unorganized, pretty disorganized, things are changing a lot out in the world at the moment, how great is it to have a space that is simple and spacious and decluttered, but I think it's important that it starts with our own space first. One mum I was speaking to actually started with her study, her child was, or children actually, were pretty frequent visitors to her study.
So they saw her doing it, they noticed how much nicer it was. Other parents have commented how the kids have really enjoyed the kitchen all being organized and decluttered. And from that sort of space, you know, it might even be your own bedroom, but kitchens and studies, great places to start, and then moving out into the lounge room into a commonly shared space.
Now there might be some of your kids' stuff there as well as your own, so you've moved from your own space to a shared space. You can probably see where this is going, right? But now you declutter and organize the shared space. And again, I've got to emphasize, it's not just throwing things away, it's organizing.
So it feels nice, it feels like there's space to move. And that's a comment that often comes up, you know, in one way or another. So now you've decluttered the lounge room.
You might, if you have a mudroom or an entranceway, you might declutter that too. It's amazing how that can fill up so quickly with boots and coats and all manner of things, hats and scarves, and that sometimes aren't even in season, yet they're still there. So, you know, seasonalizing entrances to houses feels great.
But you see, now you're decluttering and organizing, not just your stuff, but your stuff and your child's stuff as well. And from there, the last step really is to declutter your child's room. And by the time you get to your child's room, it feels normal.
It feels like, yeah, this is something we just do every sort of six to 12 months, give or take. This is something we just do in our family. And it tends to take the edge off it for a child because you've done your space, then the communal space, and now moving out to their space.
So you're sort of radiating out and making it just something that is done. And by the time parents get to that space, the child's bedroom, or some children have a playroom. By the time you get to those spaces, it's far easier because you've modeled it, obviously, right? You've modeled doing it in your own spaces.
And a child feels that. They feel through that kind of inner activity of the mirror neurons in their brain. We've mentioned that in quite a few of these podcasts, that when a child sees you doing something outwardly, they mirror it inwardly in their brain functioning.
So if you're decluttering a kitchen, and you're organizing, then within a child, they're sort of mirroring that activity. They can't help it, actually, it's involuntary. And they're mirroring that.
So it's a kind of a warm-up, you know, they're warming up, they're getting used to it, and they're inwardly actually going through it. And so when you come to do their space, they are already moving in that direction and moving with you. Now some parents ask, just to sort of round up this little podcast today.
Some parents ask, well, do you do it with children? Or do you do it when they're out? A lot of parents over the years have found decluttering when their children are not there is a lot better option. You can declutter and organize with children when they're around. And this way of starting with your own spaces first makes that easy if you want to go in that direction.
But a second little tip here is that there's a difference between decluttering and organizing. There's a bunch of parents that I've spoken with who have taken the lead in decluttering. They haven't done that with their child at all.
They felt that that would just be laborious, unnecessary, because a lot of the things they were decluttering and packing away or giving away were extraneous. The clothes, for instance, were out of season. There's no need to have, you know, they were thinking, no need to have a child with me when I'm doing this.
Toys being thrown out or thrown away or donated, that's a little more sensitive. But provided you're keeping the dear toys, keeping the ones that are important, and we know, this is for younger kids with toys, we know which ones are important and which ones are not. Which ones are just extraneous, just merchandising junk, broken, they have no real creative value to a child, the unrelenting, gifting, extended family of, you know, just given this stuff and the children really don't play with it much, aren't interested in it much.
So that's not a real big deal. It can be if a child's with you and they want to, if they're of a certain temperament, introverts in particular, just want to hang on to everything. But the differentiation here that might be helpful to you is that you might declutter, okay, that might be done on your own.
But then the organizing of it is done with your child. So you might have some baskets or tubs, you might like to label them and they can if they're at that age, they can write the labels or draw pictures, if they're little ones, so they know which basket, which things are in, and the organizing of it is done together, you know, with your child. So they have a feeling that they're taking part in it, even though the decluttering, the initial decluttering was done, you know, solo, you know, you did that.
One last tip is that a parent years ago, shared with me a really interesting way that she decluttered a radically overwhelming, cluttered environment of both the house as a whole, but of the children's toys in particular, is that her partner took the children off, they were of like an age where you can sleep over and do some camping and so on. So they waited until the weather had warmed up a little bit, they were very strategic about it. They went off camping, two children went off camping.
One of the parents stayed back, it was just a single night overnight camp. Two days, one night, two full days and decluttered. And then when the children came back, and things were spacious, pretty well organized, they didn't notice nearly so much because they were filled with all the things that they did on their on their on their camping trip.
And I thought that was another really interesting tip, which I've passed on to a bunch of parents over the years. And it seems to have been another one of those things that's eased the way in decluttering. Okay, so I hope that practical, those practical tips will be useful to you.
As always, don't hesitate to be in contact with me for if you would like to work with me one to one, you can do that right from the Simplicity Parenting website. It's a request to consult with Kim. I always say this, but it's true.
It's the thing I love to do most is work and support parents in their journey with some of the more challenging aspects of family life. Okay, that's it for now. Bye bye.
