Tag Archives: toys

The Christmas Gift Dilemma

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Personal, Simpler Living Tagged , , , ,

It’s that time of year again: decision-making time regarding Christmas gifts. When I was a child, opening gifts was high excitement. I want to recreate that for my grandkids.

But there are a few problems with this idea. Their folks aren’t looking for lots of new toys to trip over. One of my kids is a minimalist; two are moving next year. So they don’t want us to give their kids lots of stuff.

I understand, and if our grandkids were older, I’d have no problem giving them gift cards. But I really enjoy watching the littles open their gifts, and seeing how excited they get. I know from experience that there are only so many years that they show that excitement. Before long they reach the teen years, when you can’t even get them out of bed on Christmas morning.

So I’m torn. To complicate things, many popular toys are in short supply this year. Apparently an awful lot of them are sitting in shipping containers in the waters just west of California. I don’t want to buy my grandkids just any old thing so they can open something. I want it to be something they will love. I don’t want to clutter up my kids’ homes, but it’s more important to me to make my grandkids happy.

I suspect I’m not the only person grappling with this dilemma.

The Effect of Decluttering Mania on Children

By Claire Posted in Clutter, downsizing, Simpler Living, Small-House Living Tagged , ,

Last time I explored the mania that now surrounds decluttering: how some people are buying elaborate (and expensive) storage systems in order to have a “perfectly organized” home.

I feel sorry for the children of these people. It’s been a long time since I raised my kids, but I clearly recall how they loved to pull out all their toys and play with them. They made quite a mess, but they had a lot of fun. By the time they were toddlers, we had taught them to throw everything back into their toy box at the end of the day so that the room was cleaned up.

But imagine being the child of someone with decluttering mania….a five-year-old picks up his Legos and throws them in a plastic box, but his mom tells him, “No, the Legos go in the green box! Don’t put them in the blue box. That box is for your Matchbox cars. No, put them in the green box, not the brown box! The brown box is for your Transformers!”

The poor kid is just trying to put his toys away, as requested, but he soon stops caring whether he puts anything away because of Mom’s complicated system.

It’s important to teach children to pick up after themselves. But if you get caught up in some pricey storage system, you may raise children who stop picking anything up at all. Kids aren’t known for their patience.

Taking Minimalism Too Far

By Claire Posted in Clutter, Simpler Living Tagged , , , , ,

While everyone can benefit from an uncluttered home, I have to question this woman’s decluttering effort. Scroll down to the photo of the child’s room with just a few items on the shelves. There’s hardly anything there for the poor child to play with!

It’s one thing for the woman to pare down her own possessions, but making her child live a minimalist lifestyle is unfair. Kids learn so much from books and toys; in a world where smartphones are sucking up their free time, they need plenty of good books and high-quality toys to stimulate their brains.

Since they outgrow these items quickly, an astute parent will allow them to own a wide variety of books and toys that can regularly be thinned out as they are outgrown. This will limit clutter while allowing their children to develop properly, feeding their brains and growing their imaginations.

Minimalism is fine for adults without children, but those with children need to rethink the concept, especially when it comes to their children’s bedrooms.