Comments on: our never-ending minimalist battles

By: Catz

Catz — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:33:44 +0000

That is such a good idea!! Thanks Tom!

By: Jasileet

Jasileet — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 22:23:18 +0000

Scan the good stuff. Toss the uglies while the kiddos are asleep. Is that evil? Oh well, at least I’m not battling clutter. =P Kidding.

Just books and 2 favorite toys in bedrooms. Lucky enough to have a playroom but toys are cycled out of a locked closet (one for one) where they’re neatly stowed. The maximum capacity of each room depends heavily on how quickly it can be sorted. Get a feeling for how much each room can comfortably hold.

Holidays we do a sort with the kids for donation and we ask friends/family to not buy toys but rather books. Toys’R Us wishlists are a good thing, too. Keep them running all year. It makes an event of an afternoon of window shopping with the kids.

We’re also lucky to have lots of family to freecycle with. We ship lightly used clothes the kids have grown out of to cousins and receive some nice pieces sometimes, too. Toys are handled in a similar fashion.

By: Heather

Heather — Sun, 11 Oct 2009 20:44:43 +0000

I thought I would share an idea that I learned from the Flylady website regarding children’s papers. It has really worked for us, as long as I stay on top of it. Have a folder where all school papers go for each child, and then on Friday after school, have your child pick their favorite paper/project. This get the coveted refrigerator spot (or frame or bulletin board, or wherever you put special papers). You then remove last week’s refrigerator picture and put it in a notebook in a sheet protector, which becomes their scrapbook for that year (or two). All other papers can be thrown or given away, depending if your child places value on them. I was horrible about sending things to grandparents and aunts and uncles, so this has helped with this, and it gets them out of our house. We’re also saving the pictures that my kids really value. I will also occasionally encourage them to give me or their dad pictures that they don’t value, but we do.

By: Greg

Greg — Wed, 07 Oct 2009 04:56:37 +0000

Yes, toys! are the enemy! hard part is for your kids to choose what to keep and what to thow/donate.

By: Louis - Life Lessons

Louis - Life Lessons — Sun, 04 Oct 2009 23:34:30 +0000

You are right. The quest for minimalism is a continuous battle. It’s a war. You may have won a specific battle in a day but the war continues. The constant flow of papers, toys, clothes, and other things that we call “stuff” will surely give us rough days, but it doesn’t mean we are losing. Let’s continue fighting! I’m with you guys.

By: AB

AB — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 14:17:34 +0000

I think that G is right, low tech is the way to go until the end of the school year. Then, you can either have the kids pick out a number of favorite pieces for the year (maybe 5?), and keep them. Or, you could take pictures of your kid holding them, and make an inexpensive album on snapfish representing the school year (school photos, art work, accomplishments, trips, etc). That’d be a cool thing for them to show their kids. I read somewhere to take the rest of the art and wrap family gifts in it. Pretty cute.

By: Christine

Christine — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 14:24:19 +0000

I find that the clothes/shoes issue is still out of control at our house as well. Rather than just getting rid of the extra items that I have, I’ve been trying to wear them and have found that I really do like a lot of the items I’d been ignoring for the past year or two! (This also prevents the guilty feelings that usually take place when I look at an expensive item that I never wore. I make a pact with myself that I will wear it).

I think it also helps to try and integrate the summer items with the winter items. For example, I can still wear summery shirts if I have a cute sweater to layer over them. This allows me to create many different outfits without having to put away clothes based on season.

By: G

Thu, 01 Oct 2009 13:47:09 +0000

I would not waste time scanning the school papers. Put them all in a box, one per kid. Then at the end of the school year, pull it out and spend a few minutes sorting out what to keep. In the context of the year, it is easy to see what to keep.

This works well with older kids too, because sometimes they need something you think they are done with, like homework, scrap paper, vocab lists, rough drafts etc. If it was left at home, it goes to “the box”. Then it is there for later. In June, sort and toss. Easy and low tech.

By: Dene

Dene — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 11:01:11 +0000

Scanning documents is one way I keep paperwork under control, which as already mentioned is hugely useful.

Various drawings and such, if you really feel guilty about eventually disposing of them, maybe getting a scrapbook could be mutually beneficial. You get somewhere to keep them (instead of somewhere like a fridge)

Or if you’d rather move away from analogue, maybe invest in a digital photo frame.

By: tom

tom — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 07:57:38 +0000

you need one of those nifty desktop paper scanners from Fujitsu. I bought one about 2 years ago and it’s been a blessing. even better if you have a mac.

I now scan every piece of paper that I think needs to be archived. It takes about 2 second double sided and the Mac OS automatically converts it to PDF. I bought Adobe Acrobat as well which has text recognition build in.

Now every single piece of scanned paper is full text searchable via Spotlight.

Any thing nostalgic however get’s stored in a light and air tight boxes. Only some things are on display… no clutter but still got everything when I need to get to it.