Comments on: Teaching children to fight clutter

By: Putting children to work as housekeepers — Doodaddy

Putting children to work as housekeepers — Doodaddy — Thu, 15 Apr 2010 12:04:20 +0000

[...] And if I catch Fern just right, she loves to do chores with me. Anything involving water, obviously, is a huge game, but the room takes serious threat, or reward, or bribe, or else (and this is usually the case) I just clean it. To myself, I pretend I’m modeling good behavior, which my favorite clutter blog tells me is very important. [...]

By: Freelance Writing Portfolio

Freelance Writing Portfolio — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 00:19:08 +0000

[...] Unclutterer Teaching Children to Fight Clutter [...]

By: 31 Days of Organizing for a Better 2010: Resist Consumerism | Organizing Your Way

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 11:24:15 +0000

[...] guest posted at Unclutterer last month, sharing four tips to help children fight clutter. When I opened up the conversation for additional tips, Tanna from Complete Organizing Solutions [...]

By: Teaching Kids With Hands On Activities | Teaching About it

Teaching Kids With Hands On Activities | Teaching About it — Tue, 12 Jan 2010 01:51:13 +0000

[...] all the whiney kids you see on Dr. Phil? I’d explore this psychological breakthrough longer. Teaching children to fight clutter If you drop things randomly as you pass through the house, so will the kids. Joe’s point [...]

By: Emily

Emily — Tue, 29 Dec 2009 00:15:56 +0000

My mother had two brilliant strategies she used with us.

First was 3 or 4 times a year we had to do a massive cleaning of our room. We started with three piles – keep, give, throw. By the time we were done, the piles were about equal – maybe slightly skewed to the keep. But, it seemed to work and every choice was up to us. I use that strategy still today!

Second thing was ’10 things’. My mom turned cleaning and decluttering into a game. We would each have to pick up ten things before dinner or throw away ten things by the end of the week. It really took the intimidation of the big task away. I just completed ten things for ten days and pushed myself to get rid of 100 things in just over a week. It’s amazing how quickly things go once you get started.

By: Petra Teunissen-Nijsse

Petra Teunissen-Nijsse — Tue, 22 Dec 2009 10:12:12 +0000

This is a nice post on teaching children to give their toys away viaSanta: http://www.parenthacks.com/200.....as-ev.html

By: Lenetta @ Nettacow

Lenetta @ Nettacow — Sat, 19 Dec 2009 20:57:05 +0000

Excellent ideas! Hubs is a genetic clutterer (though he hates it) and I’ve become one so I don’t get hacked at his minor cluttering. It’s a survival technique, I promise. :>) Regardless, it’s not a habit I want my little one to have, so we need to get to work! I linked to this on my weekly roundup, post is under my name. Thanks!

By: A Frugal Chick » Frugal Fridays

A Frugal Chick » Frugal Fridays — Fri, 18 Dec 2009 11:10:49 +0000

[...] I get older I am becoming more of a minimalist. Here is a great article on some small steps you can take with your kids to teach them that [...]

By: Vanessa

Vanessa — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 16:32:56 +0000

I babysit two boys (5 & 7), and we clean up the basement after playing (they can mess an entire basement very quickly!). They know I’ll help them clean, as long as they are cleaning also. If I notice them dawdling or playing with the toys, I stop cleaning. Then they have to clean by themselves for about 5 minutes before I’ll help them again. They tend to think of me as their maid, so that was the best way for them to realize that I won’t clean up their messes for them.

Their mom also makes them do a “clean house” type of thing before their birthdays and Christmas. She told them that since they have so many toys, Santa might think they have TOO many, so he won’t bring them as many toys. So they get big bags and completely clear out most of their toys. They don’t get attached to their stuff, so it’s easy for them, and they are happy to clean since it means more toys in the future, haha.

By: Sarah

Sarah — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 05:01:21 +0000

I think an idea that has multiple lessons is the idea of making use of a single table for any ongoing project. This keeps all of the items needed for that project in one area, and it means that projects won’t be totally abandoned because the children can’t start on a new project until they’ve finished the old one, so children learn to finish what they start. My family used to use the dining room table but that’s because we didn’t entertain very often; a cheap foldable table would work just as well. In a house with more than one child (there were 4 kids in my house growing up!), as the children get older and demand more space they will have to learn to share the table and keep their tools contained so they don’t get mixed up with their sibling’s tools.

By: The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: The Santa Question Edition

The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: The Santa Question Edition — Thu, 17 Dec 2009 04:53:24 +0000

[...] Teaching Children to Fight Clutter My perspective is that clutter goes hand-in-hand with the accumulation of too many material items, which is often linked to financial problems. As I watch my children slowly accumulate toys, I’m beginning to plan a big decluttering of their items soon – perhaps in the early summer when we have a yard sale. (@ unclutterer) [...]

By: sandy

sandy — Wed, 16 Dec 2009 18:08:48 +0000

REcently, both of my girls (ages 16 and 11) just went through their rooms and our basement. They were ruthless.
I went through the totes that they had filled (to make sure nothing valuable was being tossed). I found a lot of the little toys that they had collected/been given/found/bought and put them all in a pile. As it is, our family has taken up geo-caching recently, and both girls babysit. SO…all those really tiny things are now geocache trash (when you geocache, you take an object and leave an object on some of them), and the slightly larger items went into a container that my girls use when babysitting. Each child they babysit for gets to pick an item to take home with them…guess who is everyone’s favorite babysitter in the neighborhood???

By: The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: The Santa Question Edition | Frugal Living News

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:12:51 +0000

By: The Simple Dollar » The Simple Dollar Weekly Roundup: The Santa Question Edition

Wed, 16 Dec 2009 14:01:57 +0000

By: Jessica

Jessica — Tue, 15 Dec 2009 23:54:39 +0000

I’ve done decluttering work with other families, and I’ve found that boys are typically naturals at decluttering! I simply say, “Let’s get rid of any old toys that would embarrass you when your friends come over, and whatever we sell at the yard sale, you can use that money toward a new game.” They light right up and start bagging everything in sight!

Girls seem to respond more to the idea that we periodically clean out our closets and donate things to charity, because other people might need it more than we do.

For both, we talk about how everyone in the family tries to be considerate of everyone else, and that’s why we have shared areas that everyone helps keep neat and clean. The only problem with this approach is when the kids start holding the parents accountable.

I have a teenage stepdaughter now, and she tends to be… a bit… casual in her approach to housekeeping. We’ve agreed that as long as her bedroom door is shut, sheets and laundry are washed once a week, and the floor is vacuumed, she can do what she wants. Personal items left around the house are rounded up either before dinner time or before we leave the house together. We’ve spent a lot of time discussing the ‘categorical imperative’ and how that relates to living with others.

In general I think kids respond best to structure, and they’ll cheerfully go along with any rules that seem fair and consistent.