We wage a continual battle every day with clutter and disorganization. With two working parents, and a nine-year-old and a four-year-old who would much rather do hundreds of other things than clean, it is a losing battle. We spend Saturday mornings cleaning and try to keep up with daily chores, but the mess is inevitable.
One of our biggest challenges is keeping track of library books. I’ve designated places for them—mainly, not mixed in with our other books—but my daughter tends to drop whatever book she is reading in the place she is reading—the bed, the chair, the futon, the car. On library day, there is a mad rush to find books. Needless to say, we pay a lot of late fines. I figure we are more than doing our part in funding the library. After one particularly frustrating (and not totally successful) search for missing books, I went to the library and picked up several books on organization. Not that I haven’t looked at such books before—I even realized later that I’d checked out at least two of them at some point before.
As I read these books, I realize that I already know how to get organized. I understand the principle of categorization and putting things in their place. I know how to file, sort, and what to throw away. The challenge is finding the time to do it, and keeping up with it. And getting my family to do it, too. The truth is, we just have too much stuff to manage, which I guess is one of the basic keys to organization that we haven’t quite mastered.
But the accumulation of goods is, as many of us already know, not essentially a problem of organization. Yes, there are times when we overbuy goods we already have because the house is such a mess we forgot we had it in the first place. But once you have children, the accumulation of goods magnifies a hundredfold. There are grandparents, aunt and uncles and friends who just want to buy stuff for your kids. And then your kids want stuff. And then they go to school and bring home these catalogs and you feel like you are just not a good parent unless you buy some stuff (and by the way I absolutely love the jewelry I’ve bought out of those catalogs—unique pieces that I would never have the time or the conscience to shop for otherwise). We grew up in a culture of materialism, and it’s hard to know how to change your lifestyle to be unmaterialistic. I think in some ways we definitely live by different principles than our parents, but it is a constant battle to fight not only the strong external pressures—the ads and catalogs that come into our house, the birthdays and holidays, the incidental “reward” toys—but also the internal pressures—the emotional bond we’ve learned to associate with playing with a toy, or reading a new book, or teaching our child to ride a bike
One day I told my daughters they each had to find five things to get rid of—either throw away or give away. My younger daughter completely ignored the request. My older daughter promptly went up to the attic and pulled out a toy from their toddler days, two dolls, a stuffed dolphin, and several books. I had to fight the urge to challenge her choices. One doll was a Madeline doll, from the books she so loved as a child and was the first book she memorized by heart. The other was a doll my sister had bought for her. One of the books was a hardcover of Anne of Avonlea, the second book in the Anne of Green Gables series, one of my absolutely favorite series of books as a child and younger teen. Though my daughter is an avid reader, she has not yet show any interest in these books. I think she will, though.
I donated the toy to the toddler room at our church. The dolls and dolphin went into a Goodwill bag along with maternity clothes. They may end up in the trash. The books she’d chosen to give away are still sliding around the back of my car until I decide where to donate them. (Though I’ve recently had the brilliant idea to regift some of them.) The Anne of Avonlea book? I’ve tucked that away, hoping that some day soon she’ll revel in the joy of reading Anne as much as I did.
