Hello, and welcome back to the Simplicity Diaries with me, Kim John-Payne. I'm just back from a week away, traveling, doing workshops about simplicity parenting and about these four pillars of simplicity. And a mother wrote to me just as I was getting back into the office about a really lovely story about decluttering and how decluttering had, I think it's fair to say, a fairly dramatic effect on her family.
Now I asked her if I could share this, if I could share what she wrote, because it's just so beautifully written and so simple. And she kindly agreed that I could do that. So this is a letter from Mariella, and she writes, I'm a mother of two young kids, two and four.
I've just finishing listening to your book on Audible for the second time, and I've just purchased a hard copy to highlight notes. I felt like your insights and expertise has completely cracked open the issue we've been experiencing with our kids in recent months. Our house was filled with stuff, too much stuff.
And stuff triggers my own anxiety. Somehow, before listening to your book, I failed to realize that my kids were as overwhelmed as I was in the face of all the stuff we had in our house. To remedy my own overwhelm, I would buy toys, more and more coloring books, new shoes to make the morning routine go smoother, a blanket with my daughter's favorite TV characters in hopes that she would sleep better.
It just didn't stop. In turn, this caused my daughter to become overwhelmed, which would increase my own anxiety, and round and round we went. Well, we've just halved all of our kids' toys and are about to halve them again.
They didn't notice. But the shift in their behavior was instant. When we reduced the toys by half, the fighting was reduced by even more.
They're less clingier. They are happier. Everyday routines seem to happen with less effort and less difficulty.
Your book was so relatable to me in ways I could never have imagined before I picked it up. I just wanted you to know what a difference it's made in our lives. We are happier as a family.
My husband and I are happier as a couple and as a team. And best of all, our kids are happier together. Now, when I wrote to Morelli asking her if I could kindly read this out to you, she actually wrote back saying something else.
She said, this parenting gig is pretty tough, but it's made it easier, not only to think there's expert advice such as yours, but also just knowing our issues are so common and normal, and there's literally a way to have them fixed. Now, what a lovely letter. How beautifully written.
But you can hear the passion within it. But let's break this down a little bit. First of all, what I was really touched by was her just open-heartedness at her own anxieties and how she would attempt to soothe her own anxieties as a parent by buying stuff.
And, you know, it's very common. I've heard this from so many parents over the years that we attempt to buy things when maybe our confidence is not so high or we're feeling guilty about being at work for so many hours or, you know, all these different levels of why we do it. But what this mother was able to really, really name, didn't she, is that when she did that, her children were then overwhelmed by what she was buying in order to relieve her overwhelm.
You see, this is a big point, isn't it? It's not something just to skip over, that often our overwhelm leads us to buy things that overwhelm our children, which in turn lead us to buy more things because we're feeling our children are overwhelmed. And as she wrote, and, you know, and round and round we went. That was the first point that really stood out for me.
Then she went on to say they halved the amount of toys and the children didn't notice. Now, myself and our many, many hundreds approaching a thousand Simplicity Parenting Coaches around the world, we hear this all the time. And every time I hear it, it just makes me smile.
And to imagine that parent's home, when they actually do simplify and do declutter, how the children don't even notice. One mother said to me, and this is also with her permission I say this, but she actually said to me that when she got rid of, I'm guessing now, but you know, like three quarters or so of the toys, she gave a number for that. And it seemed like a lot.
But when she got rid of a high number of toys and left just a few, her child's comment was, wow, I didn't know I had so many toys. It's so lovely to hear things like this, and we hear it all the time. So, you know, hesitating because we think our children will react badly is, you know, like basically don't worry about that at all.
That they either don't notice, they don't notice it at all, or they celebrate it because now what they do have, they can dive into and kind of get their arms around, almost kind of physically, I guess, but get their arms around the amount of toys they have now because they're less. Now, and here's the third point, is that this mom also noticed, do you remember she wrote, I'll just read it again. She wrote, when we reduced the toys by half, the fighting was reduced by even more.
And then she goes on to say, they're less clingier, they're happier. Everyday routines just seem to happen with less effort and less difficulty. Now, you know, this is something again we hear over and over, is the children's behavior improves.
It's almost like the space that's created outwardly, you know, just more space, you know, there's less toys, there's less clutter, means that somehow there's more space inwardly. The two things, even though, you know, there's no, you can't see it, there's a feeling that so many parents have spoken about that once there's more space in the house, it seems like the kid's behavior improves, they calm down in particular, there's less frenetic activity. And so the outer spaciousness relates to an inner spaciousness.
And that's, you know, that's got to be good, right? That's got to be really good. So this lovely young mom's testimony really to the wide ranging effects of simplifying and decluttering, it's just really lovely to hear. And in my response back to her when she emailed this in was, that's fantastic that you've got that foundation underneath you.
What do you plan next? And she, you know, basically responded, we wanted to get this in place. And it's hard to choose because basically she was so excited by this, so encouraged by it, that some of the other pathways of simplicity, the clarifying of rhythms of predictability, the second or the third, I beg your pardon, third pathway of really simplifying scheduling. And then this fourth, the big one, right, is simplifying screens and filtering out adult information.
This decluttering for this young mom and dad enabled them now to look with real confidence at where they would simplify and balance other aspects of their life. And that's just thrilling to hear that. So I thought I'd share that with you today and also just add those comments in.
I sure hope that's been helpful. It was it was really uplifting for me, as it always is to get these kinds of emails. OK, thanks very much.
Bye bye for now.
