Kids and tidying up with KonMari method
I have found an interest in the KonMari method of tidying up. One of its main pillars is to declutter your life by throwing away things that bring you no joy. It makes sense from a productivity perspective, especially when you live in a small apartment.
The problem is how to apply this theory to my pre-school kids' belongings? As a parent I think a lot of their old stuff (primarily toys) should go to recycling, but if I ask my kids they refuse to let me throw away any of their old things. They will become sad if I do.
How to handle this problem?
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Two words:
Garage sale.
One of the easiest ways to get children to give up their old toys is to suggest that they sell them, and keep some/all of the proceeds to buy newer, better toys/books/clothes. We just did this with our guys (4 and 2), and they loved it. The sale wasn't very effective - as we didn't know how to properly advertise it - but even so, the small amount of money they earned was nice - and we let them spend it right away to give them a good feeling (unfortunately, it was only each, but that was still plenty for them to be happy with). Had we earned a few hundred dollars, we would've encouraged them to save most of it, but still allowed them to spend a portion right away to encourage the positive feelings.
The kids both helped pick out the toys to sell, and wanted to sell basically everything that wasn't in their 'play with now' section of the house. They put the toys on the tables in the garage and sat with us while we sold them. They got to play with them a bit one last time as we waited for customers, but were perfectly happy to go back in without them.
The nice thing is they are now disassociated from the toys they agreed to give up - so if we did just disappear them now, they wouldn't mind (or notice).
I think you need to flip the problem upside down. Rather than you being the one to say which of their toys should go to recycling, have them decide. The process will be better accepted by your 5-year-olds if it is a choice that they make themselves. Set the scene for the project by doing the following:
Get a new simple storage solution, as suggested in the KonMari method. Kids are usually interested in new things.
Before you fill up the new storage...
Put out 3 cardboard boxes
One labeled "give to kids in need"
One labeled "trash"
One labeled "keep and put in new storage system"
Avoid suggesting or pre-sorting their toys for them. This will feel like you are taking their things away. Have them come with you to the donation center, so they understand where it goes. Repeat the sorting exercise every couple of months. If they are still reluctant to put anything in the give away / trash boxes, you can introduce the idea of "do you love this e.g. teddy bear? does it make you happy?"
Edit: one thing I forgot to say... with my husband who is reluctant to let go of things, I tell him that we'll keep the "give away" bag in the basement for a couple weeks in case he changes his mind. That way, if regrets set in, it's not such a forever decision.
If you have the feeling that your children have too much stuff, one method I've employed to great success with my kids is the following:
Gather all their non-essential things into one place.
Take turns taking an item from the pile until everything's been distributed. If a 50/50 split seems too unfair, it's pretty easy to fix by doing a 2/1 or 3/2 split.
Your pile contains the items that will be disposed of (donated, sold, or thrown away if damaged/incomplete/broken).
Your child's pile contains the items that they've chosen to keep.
Let your child freely exchange things between the 2 piles until they're satisfied.
It helps to impress on them how what you're doing will help others, and it gives them a lot of control over what they get to keep. I also explained everything up front so they weren't surprised, and if I picked something that they were more attached to than I thought I could re-emphasize the "exchange" phase at the end.
One you get the "amount of stuff" they have reduced, then it's a lot easier to exchange the storage they have with smaller bins. At that point keeping the clutter down is a simple matter of "you've just got X and it doesn't fit. What would you like to give away so you can keep it?"
While I see a lot of value in teaching this to kids, people's (especially kids') personalities and attachments to things vary a lot, and this certainly would have been very traumatic to me as a child. First and foremost you should make sure that your own desire to "tidy up" is not traumatic for your kids and is not something you pressure/force them into.
If they are hesitant, one good way to approach it and give them agency would be not to bring up giving away/throwing away their things at all, but instead, when they want something new, telling them that they already have too many things, and that they need to reduce that before you'll buy them more.
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