Hellobee

Mrs. Garland recently posted about her experiences with the KonMari method of decluttering and I wanted to share our experience, focusing on how we’ve applied it to the kids’ stuff (I very much agree with Mrs. Garland’s assessment on the cheese factor; we didn’t personify our belongings, but applied most of the practical aspects of Kondo’s two books).

Marie Kondo’s The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up and her sequel, Spark Joy, have drastically reduced clutter in the Dolphin household. Mr. Dolphin fully admits that he’s a packrat and all the clutter in our home, which seems to have exploded with two kids, was driving me absolutely crazy! I didn’t know how to fix it because every time we would bring the house back to a state that I was happy with, a week later I felt like I was living in a disaster zone again.

After reading Kondo’s books, I started decluttering my own clothes in December, but we tried again from scratch post-Panda’s arrival—with Mr. Dolphin on board—and have been going through category by category (though we didn’t go in the exact order Kondo suggests). Kondo’s method really worked for the Dolphin household because it dramatically shifted our thinking. Instead of deciding what to get rid of, she basically flips the premise so that you assume you will get rid of everything and only keep what “sparks joy.”

While we’re not quite finished yet, our condo is already around 25 bags/boxes lighter and it feels great. We don’t have a garage or any storage space, so removing so much stuff has really helped reduce my feeling of suffocating under the clutter. To be honest, I still feel like we have too much stuff.

Our new setup in the boys’ room with two IKEA Trofast units.  All of Lion and Panda’s clothes, blankets, linens, books and toys live here now.

While Mr. Dolphin was fully supportive of ridding ourselves of our own stuff, he was less certain that we should “spark joy,” as he puts it, with the kids’ stuff. He pointed out that we are still not sure if we are going to have a third, so things that Lion and Panda have both outgrown may find use again if we have another baby. For toys of Lion’s that he never liked or played with, he reasoned that Panda might like them. It took some convincing, but we did end up going through the kids’ clothes, books and toys and either sold or donated at least four garbage bags worth of stuff plus a Mamaroo. We were both pretty surprised because the kids still have plenty of stuff and I didn’t even know that we had accumulated so much!

Here’s how we tackled Lion and Panda’s stuff:

Clothes: We got rid of the vast majority of clothes that Panda has outgrown. We kept about six or seven outfits in size newborn and another seven or eight in sizes 0-3 months that we thought were really cute, would use again if we had a third child or would have them turned into a quilt if we end up not having a third. We also drastically reduced the amount of clothes that Lion and Panda have now. While we had saved all of Lion’s clothes, there were some pieces that were badly stained and should have been tossed. Additionally, because Lion is the first grandchild on both sides of the family, he has been gifted a lot of clothes. Ultimately, we decided that Panda and Lion didn’t need twenty-plus shirts in a particular size. We decided that ten to twelve shirts plus ten to twelve bottoms was more than enough. We would have enough for one week, plus a couple pairs to take to daycare and a couple of extra outfits just in case. Because I do the laundry every week, more than ten to twelve outfits was just taking up a lot of extra space and giving Lion decision fatigue when picking out his clothes in the morning. We got rid of almost two garbage bags of clothes, taking most of them to a children’s consignment shop.

We now use shallow drawers and fold the clothes so that they stand up.  Lion is able to easily pull out the drawer to select his shirt in the morning.

Books: I absolutely love books and so does Lion, so this was a little bit harder. While I was ruthless with my own collection and got rid of hundreds of books, Lion actually has us read almost all the books he has. We did donate to his daycare any doubles, including if he had them in two different formats—like a board book and a paperback. We also got rid of the books that Mr. Dolphin and I particularly disliked. But in the end, he still has a ton of books.

Toys: Mr. Dolphin and I collected all of the kids’ toys, put them in one pile in the living room and started going through them. Mr. Dolphin initially wanted to hold onto a lot of toys that Lion never liked just in case Panda has a different preference. We also had serious discussions about how much enjoyment Lion needs to get out of a toy to make it worth keeping. I called a lot of his toys “five-minute toys,” meaning that Lion is interested in it every once in awhile for five minutes and then moves on; I didn’t want to keep these because it didn’t seem to be worth the space for the short-term enjoyment Lion experiences.

There were some obvious toys to keep: Thomas the Tank Engine trains, tracks and fixtures; Magna-Tiles; nesting blocks; and balls—so many balls! We ended up getting rid of toys that we found particularly obnoxious in terms of lights and noise; most of these were “five-minute toys” anyway.

Blankets/linens: We had a crazy number of blankets, nearly all of them gifted to us. We kept some muslin blankets and playmat/quilts that our families made (which Lion loves to play with). We had quite a few large fluffy blankets that we never used, so those were donated.

Quilts and playmats for Lion and Panda made by Mr. Dolphin’s mother and stepmother.

Big Items: Babies have so many large items that they use for such short periods of time. Panda technically could still use the Mamaroo, but he never liked it very much. More accurately, he never needed it; he was content in the Mamaroo, but also just as happy to be on his play mat or in his vibrating chair. It didn’t make sense to keep the Mamaroo around anymore. We bought it used and resold it for close to our purchase price. Panda’s bassinet, vibrating chair and jumparoo are probably soon on their way out, too, since he’s outgrown the former two and isn’t particularly interested in the latter. His playmat is still used on an almost daily basis, so we’ll keep that around for a few more months. All of these items are so big and bulky that I didn’t want to keep them around “just in case” we have a third. If we find that our hypothetical third child really loves being in motion, we can purchase another used Mamaroo; same with the jumparoo. Because they are items with such short shelf lives for infants, I reasoned, they are easy to find on Craigslist or in consignment stores and we can recoup most of our outlays on resale.

.  .  .  .  .

Prior to decluttering the kids’ items and finding a new organization system, I felt like there were toys everywhere! Lion had a toy chest in his room where we kept blankets and lots of toys; he used both the storage ottomans in our living room, which had a mix of books and toys; there was also a basket upstairs which had more books and toys. Balls—large bouncy balls, foam footballs, foam round balls, small soccer and basketballs—were everywhere. Other than keeping his Thomas trains and Magna Tiles in two Tupperware containers, there was no real order to his toys other than to say that we had boxes/baskets to keep them in. When we decluttered the kids’ items, I was actually surprised that Lion and Panda had fewer toys than I initially thought; it just seemed like they had so many because they invaded every room of our home. We needed better organization.

Now, Kondo suggests that we don’t actually need new organizational systems and we have everything we need for organization in our home already. But for us, new organization actually made a lot of sense for the kids’ stuff. While, like Mrs. Garland, we found that we do have enough closet/cabinet space for our stuff after decluttering, we wanted to have a system that Lion (and eventually Panda) can understand and access.

I found two IKEA Trofast units on Craigslist for a good price and snapped them up. When I went to pick them up, the woman asked if I had kids then said, “These will change your life!” Well, it has been about a month and I can see a huge difference! There are no more toys in the living room, all of his balls get their own bin, and it is easy for Lion to find things. When we used the toy chest and ottomans, Lion would pull out all of his toys as he looked for whatever item he wanted to play with. As a result, a lot of things ended up on the floor, even if he wasn’t playing with them.

Now, all of his toys live in the Trofast units. We use one unit for all of the clothes, blankets, linens and burp rags. It is much easier for him to pull these drawers open than it was his dresser and using Marie Kondo’s method of folding (where the clothes are standing up), he can see exactly what shirts are available to him instead of rifling through everything.

We placed Thomas the Tank Engine trains and Magnatiles in small containers at the bottom of the unit because they are two of Lion’s most-loved toys and they’re relatively heavy.  Having them on the bottom makes it easier for him to pull out.

For the second unit, we have a variety of different bins that house his toys and try to keep like items together. There is a bin that holds his balls, one for his Thomas trains, one for the train tracks, another for non-Thomas things that go (cars, trucks, planes), one for Magna Tiles. With this system, he only pulls out one thing at a time because he knows exactly where everything is.

Balls, balls and more balls! Bouncy balls, light-up balls, foam basketballs and footballs, volleyballs, plastic balls . . . 

We have placed some puzzles and toys that don’t fit nicely into the bins on top of the unit and they’re easy for him to grab.

Instead of trying to cram his ever-growing collection of books into the spice rack/bookshelf fixtures on the wall (which didn’t work well because the taller books would end up toppling out and he had too many books), we took down most of the racks and put his books in baskets, instead. We had used these baskets in other rooms before getting the Trofast unit and decided to use them for books instead of toys after realizing that books at his daycare are stored in the same way and Lion loves running to the book basket to pick out his books. While we initially had these baskets in another corner of the room, we had some concerns that Lion would try to climb the Trofast unit and decided to place the baskets on the lower shelf. They are at a level where Lion can still see the books and pick out the ones that he wants, but the baskets are too heavy for him to pull down.

The vast majority of the kids’ books are now in baskets and we took down three of the spice rack-style bookshelves we previously had.  They are so easy for Lion to grab (and he now recognizes the books by the spine, now) and, as a bonus, the book baskets are heavy enough that he can’t pull them off the Trofast unit to climb.

Clean up is a breeze now because all* of the kids’ items go in the same room and every item has a specific place in their room. Lion has always been good about putting his toys away (his daycare teacher calls him the “super cleaner” of the class), but because “putting things away” previously involved dumping everything haphazardly into baskets and boxes in all different rooms, there wasn’t much order to it. Now, when I do my evening cleanup after the boys go to bed and find that we’ve missed toys in the living room, I simply place them in front of the bedroom door so that in the morning, they can go back into their proper bins. It has seriously been a game changer both for Lion, who is able to easily find what he wants and put it back, and my own sanity!

*We do still have one kids’ item in the living room, a small display of books. We try to keep library books only in this fixture, while the rest of the books live in their room.