Listen To Your Kids

Today was another productive day. Not quite a productive as I dreamed of being but still good. :-) How are you all doing? If you also have been working on simplifying and getting rid of clutter I would really love to hear how it is going.

Our big project of the day was Megan's closet. It wasn't horrible but I knew there was quite a bit in there that she didn't like, want or use. So we went to work.

 I am curious how things go in your family when you are going through your children's clothes. We get most of clothes second hand and a lot of Megan's especially are given to us. She has always had plenty of clothes as a result but not always ones she likes a lot. But I have been quite guilty over the years of making her keep a bunch that she never wants to wear. "That would look so cute on you." "You might want that sometime."  "You might need that." As a result Megan has generally always had a stuffed dresser and full closet but complains about not having clothes to wear or things she likes. She also has really struggled at times to keep things clean. She shoves things in her drawers and the drawers usually look quite chaotic. Like this:

  Today I determined to not make Megan keep things just because I wanted them for her. Yes we wanted her to have enough clothes to wear but currently she had way more than she needed and we had plenty of room for decluttering.

We got rid of (mostly ready for donation or taking to the consignment store, some things went in the trash and a pile is ready to be made into rugs) nearly 90 items in these categories:

• Some didn't fit right. Megan is quite slim and unless the have the elastic inside the waist of the jeans she needs to wear a belt and she doesn't like to do that. So generally she won't wear them.
• Some were worn out - those are ready for being repurposed into rugs and that was not part of the 90 because they aren't truly ready to head out the door.
• Others that were worn out did go straight to the trash if I didn't have a good way to repurpose them.
• Megan thought some were ugly.
• Megan didn't like the color of some. She tries to avoid pink whenever possible. I haven't always been patient with this but as I am not a big fan of pink myself (and wear it very little) I really should have been.
• They weren't a comfortable style for her. Socks were heavy in this category. She doesn't like the feel of short socks. She had been given a bunch of nice new short ones but since she doesn't like them they really were just clogging up her drawer. I said that she could get rid of them. Then I tried them on and they fit well and I like that style. Hooray! So those didn't count in the 90 either as they were just moving places.

 I have been frusterated with Megan being a bit of a messy "pack rat" before but when it comes to clothes I discovered that she really isn't very attached. I have been the real problem wanting her to keep many things that she doesn't like. So though I do think kids shouldn't be super picky and if that is all they have to wear and that is all that you can afford then they should wear it with thankfulness but when you have more than enough and your child is happy to get rid of some - far be it from me (now) to make her keep it. With all of our getting rid of things - they fit much better in the drawers!

 Megan wanted me to take a picture of the drawer above. We did our sorting while the weeks clothes were still in the laundry. So after she had removed everything from her pants drawer that she didn't like or want this was the only thing left in her drawer. But that did change after I got some more laundry folded....

Now she has a reasonable amount in her drawer and they are ones that actually fit well and she likes wearing. Wonderful!

 This is our stack of things to get rid of! 90 + items!

 The closet does look better now. It would have looked more sparse but I added more clean clothes in and we put some of her stuff that had made way over to Mara's side back onto her side.

  We did decide that there are a couple of things we still need to get for her (another pair of shoes and a couple of nice sweaters/tops that would go with some of her skirts. Over all we are quite happy with our job well done.