When Your Family Makes it Hard to Declutter

Hello!

So much for this idea of writing every day!! :-) Life just gets busy. There have been a couple of big things going on this week. Mara came home from Texas. She flew in on Wednesday night. She was just having to much trouble with her health down there and especially when they would go on trips she was struggling to keep up physically. We are still searching to come up for a reason for her extreme fatigue and other symptoms. She went to the Doctor down there a couple of times and they tested for Celiac and Chronic Mono but both came back negative. We are going to see a natural MD here this coming Friday. 

   The other big thing this week was finally getting all of my honey extracted. I like to do that much earlier but in September and October so far I was busy or sick every day that I had time and it wasn't cold or raining. Thursday I didn't really have time (as I had to take Megan to the Doctor, we went and sang at the Nursing home, Mara had just gotten home and we wanted to visit and I had a music lesson scheduled) but it looks like it may have been our last day this year to go up over 60 degrees and be sunny so I used the little time I had to get all of the frames of honey pulled from the hives. It was sad that I hadn't been able to do it earlier as it was obvious that the bees had eaten quite a lot of honey. Oh well, I still got a nice share and it is done now! Friday (amidst teaching music lessons, working with a friend on getting things ready for our homeschooling co-op, running kids into town and picking up sewing to do and then having a bunch of company for supper) and today I got all the extracting down. It is lovely to have it done for another year.

But on to the project of simplifying and decluttering. This week my big project has been the kitchen. It hadn't seemed super cluttered but Jonathan (the one who puts dishes away) has been complaining about the crowding and I am trying to go through everything anyway so it seemed like a good idea. It went went and I will share more about it in another post.

They are working at looking angry and upset over the things that I am getting rid of. 

All was going well anyway until some people in my household took note of some of the things that I was planning to get rid of. Aaron and Megan (my drama king and queen) started an uproar. Now truly it was mostly in good fun and they weren't actually breaking down in tears or anything but it is completely true that they would have preferred that I didn't get rid of quite a few items. 

   And when it came to the old, black, ugly pizza cutter (that I thought I would get rid of and just keep the nice looking, newer one that we had) they did truly start and uproar, then Mara joined them and then they brought Ken into it who said "We can't get rid of that Pizza cutter, we have always had that one." So on that item I had to cave and I got rid of the nice one instead.

  By the way, Jonathan was firmly supporting me in the whole uproar. He loves to get rid of things and is not very sentimental. The other three kids (especially the younger two) are quite sentimental and get attached to various things - thankfully not everything- they aren't quite hoarders yet. :-) Ken and I can be pretty sentimental too. Thankfully it seems to be just in certain areas. Ken is sentimental when it comes to anything to do with his grandparents house (thankfully we don't have a huge amount of items from there) or when our kids were little. Traditions are very important to him and if an item goes with a tradition then he is unlikely going to want to get rid of it. But otherwise he is incredibly neat and tidy.

  Getting rid of things when others around you (and it doesn't even have to be in your household - many outside your household can make you second guess decluttering decisions) think it is a bad idea can make the process hard. You may have already been struggling with the decision yourself and then they come and make it very hard to let go.

  Here are some of my thoughts for dealing with this:

• Respect your spouse. If they really don't want you to get rid of something, then don't. Really work at decluttering the areas that are more your areas and that they don't care about and hope that they will see the beauty in doing that and be more willing to let go. If something they want to keep is really cluttering up an area that you need to keep clean maybe you can move it to an area that is more their area. I can think of a time that I did this; there was an ugly (in my mind), red, plastic placemat that had been Ken's Grandma's. We already had quite a few items "to remember her with" (not like he would forget anyway) so I thought maybe we could get rid of it. Ken didn't think so, so I put it in his office to decorate his desk with as I didn't have another good place to keep it. He is happy with it there and I am happy not to have to mess with it and that works for us.
• Listen to your kids, but that doesn't mean that you have to do what they say.
• If it is your domain and your stuff (such as the kitchen) then stick to your guns (with your children not your spouse) and move it out. 
• Explain yourself - "Here is why we don't need this anymore."
• Ask them when they last used it (whatever they don't want to get rid of). Aaron really didn't want me to get rid of a meat tenderizing hammer. Our neighbor (cleaning out her house) had given it to us a year or so ago and we had never used it. But Aaron thought it looked cool. Sorry, we weren't using it, so it goes.
• As long as you are not decluttering their stuff (I think that really should be done with them in a sympathetic but realistic way- at least when they are as old as my kids are) then it might make the most sense to try to declutter when your sentimental ones are away.

  Do you have to deal with family members that are attached to stuff? How do you go about it?