Having kids can be hard. At least I find it to be so sometimes.
Having kids stuff everywhere is maddening. But it is totally not their fault.
Kids take cues from their parents and those around them, plus they have some natural tendencies to explore and move on to the next thing.
They also are experts at analyzing different situations and pushing the boundaries of what they can get away with (I’m no expert or behavioral scientist, this is just what I’ve observed).
At our house we don’t really watch TV. We have one, but it’s hidden up in the guest bedroom where we really have to go seek it out and intentionally pick something off of Netflix. It isn’t just droning on in the background.
It wasn’t always like this, so it has been amazing to watch what this simple change has done to our family, our kids, and what we then notice when we’re out in the world.
What we do have is an art room. This room is a creative space just for the kids where they have a bunch of supplies, various surfaces to work on (including just the open floor), are able to pin things all over the walls, and store various projects.
It is really interesting to see how the nature of the space affects the kids. When the art room is clean, it’s their favorite place in the house. They will disappear in there for hours, completely engrossed in their own imaginations. Even my younger daughter, who generally needs to be entertained a bit more, will be found silently constructing sculptures and sketching drawings on the floor when my internal “Where is everyone?” alarm goes off.
As you might imagine, this room tends to get totally trashed. But that’s fine, it’s a mess I don’t see. It is out of the way from the main traffic flow of the house and I just avoid it most of the time. Being a disaster is literally its intended purpose.
However, there is an interesting phenomenon that happens when this space gets too cluttered up.
The kids start to migrate their projects out to the living room table, or the kitchen, or my desk – nice, clear, decluttered spaces where they can think and create.
That’s when it’s time to intervene.
This may sound familiar, but one recurring parenting discussion that we have is around putting things away when they are done. I mean, it’s not like they just leave everything out and move on to the next thing when they are at school all day. Right?
No matter how many times we point out how the clutter is affecting them – that they love the clean space, and avoid the messy one – the lesson just doesn’t seem to stick.
So why does this happen at home?
As I mentioned, they’re experts at pushing boundaries, finding out where the limits of their behaviours lie, and what they can get their parents to do for them!
There is also just too much stuff.
I can’t seem to get there with them, but one thing is for certain. If there was half as much stuff in the art room, it would still get messy. It is a space for making messes.
However, with less stuff there would be more empty shelving, more space for these half done projects to live. It would also be way easier to clean up in there. As it is, finding space for the stuff can get difficult (although starting with the trash can usually gets you about 80 percent of the way there).
This room is definitely one of those sticky spots for us. It’s easy to ignore then just organize without going through a deep clean out. It hasn’t happened yet, but it’s on the list.
Off the treadmill
All of this brings me to my main thought. Honestly, I believe it is the whole theme of this writing project.
I’ve already said this in a few articles, and it was a really powerful realization in my personal journey towards minimizing, simplifying, and just gaining some sanity…
Cleaning is a treadmill, but minimizing myself is forever.
What do I mean by this?
Well, basically for more than a few years I was going about it all wrong and it was driving me absolutely crazy. I was trying to apply a single guy’s tool kit to a growing family’s problem!
When I was single, I could clean my apartment and it would stay that way for a few weeks. Now I am applying that same technique, but every day. All day.
I was cleaning, not minimizing and decluttering, and cleaning happens every day no matter what. It doesn’t matter how empty or cramped your house is. You could live in the most minimalist home, but there are going to be dirty dishes, meal prep waste, those pesky coffee grinds, and kids cutting up big pieces of paper into small pieces of paper.
Anyone have a kid who loves every rock and stick she comes across? Ya, we’ve got one of those.
Cleaning up after life never ends. You can’t clean your way to minimalism. It doesn’t count. It’s not even the same game!
Cleaning as Procrastination
What I realized is that I was using cleaning as an excuse to procrastinate on the harder decisions of my own minimalism.
I remember saying, literally complaining out loud, that I don’t have time to clean up my own world since I’m constantly cleaning up everyone else’s.
Seriously?
I have four snowboards, three bikes, surfboards, skateboards, camping gear and a bunch of old paperwork because of the dishes?
Now, don’t get me wrong, organizing and decluttering does take time and life can get in the way. But, unlike cleaning, when you minimize your closet or your desk it tends to stay like that for a while.
Minimizing yourself now is buying time in the future – the flywheel effect.
In business, you often read about Jim Collin’s concept of a flywheel effect. As momentum grows things move faster and feed on themselves. Minimalism has this same effect on time.
Time invested in decluttering now makes more time in the future. You’re trading an hour now for countless hours later.
With my own world – closet, desk, paperwork, garage, kitchen – evolving more towards a simple, minimalist, and mindful space, there is more time. With more time the daily cleaning is less of a big deal.
This, in turn, leaves me with a calmer state of mind – less hurried and frantic. And this leaves me more time for all sorts of things – working, writing, meditating, exercising, volunteering – but also tackling the next sticky space in the house.
In our hectic world, minimalism literally creates time.
In investing our money, we would always invest one dollar now if we were guaranteed a stream of dividends in the future.
Investing an hour minimizing now will guarantee you a stream of available hours in the future. If time is money, as the saying goes, that is a wise investment.