You read my blog, some of you have been to my house and seen me with the kids, you know my answer: even if somedays I want the uber-organized house, I realize they'll only have Silly Bandz and want to build forts for a little while longer. And the mess is worth it, more even than I thought.
(Besides, I'm convinced that if you don't teach kids, or even adults, to reduce/reuse/recycle/redistribute their belongings themselves (instead of hiring a professional organizer to do it for them), they'll never learn how. So we're learning altogether.)
The big thing is to teach them to strike a balance by learning what HAS to be kept (government stuff, insurances) and what can be binned/recycled. Now someone I know very well has been known to bin unopened letters containing cheques and other valuables as well as to-day's newspaper. All because she was forced to be excessively tidy as a girl.
ReplyDeleteI'm in the "I'm glad they all have their own homes group!" I wish I were a bit like your mom, but not totally like her. She's pretty ruthless about getting rid of stuff.
ReplyDeleteMy girls still have some stuff that's "stored" here (probably mostly things that will eventually be tossed by them)...but, I'm not so organized that it bothers me that much. When it starts to bother me, I'll request it be moved. The worst that can happen is that they'll have to deal with it when we're gone.