- Kids are less nostalgic than adults, which makes it easier to instill good decluttering habits.
- I taught my kids how to declutter at a young age by making it a regular part of life.
- We followed the one-in-one-out rule and sometimes regifted toys and games they'd outgrown.
As a professional decluttering consultant who works with both kids and adults, I've noticed that children aren't nearly as attached to their toys, games, trinkets, and keepsakes as their parents.
In fact, it's often the mom saying, "Oh honey! Are you sure you want to get rid of that scooter? You used to love it so much!" Never mind that they've been too big to ride it for years.
Children lack this sense of nostalgia that keeps us oldsters hanging on to useless stuff because of an emotional attachment.
That's why the perfect time to get kids used to letting go is when it's easy — when they're young and before they've come to the conclusion that discarding their things is tantamount to ditching every beautiful moment of their lives.
Here's how I taught my kids to let go of stuff — not stuff that was dear to them, but the things they'd outgrown or ceased to love.
I made decluttering a regular part of life
On the weekends, I'd make a list of chores for my kids that might look like this: Take the sheets off your bed, empty the dishwasher, clean out your backpack, and find five things you don't need anymore.
By age 6, my youngest found decluttering kind of fun, and in the process often discovered things she'd misplaced that she was thrilled to rediscover.
She'd run into the dining room with her five things — maybe a plastic party favor, an old drawing, a broken crayon, and two tangled bunches of yarn— and then run back to her room to play with her newly found old favorites.
I handed the kids a paper grocery bag and asked them to fill it up
I'd tell them they could put any trash or recycling — like leftover school papers or dried-up pens — that were in their rooms in the bag as well as true clutter.
The idea was to make it easy to just get stuff out of the room. There was usually a lot of paper in there, as well as old toys or broken knickknacks.
The point was to make the case that a toy you no longer play with is as useless as one that's broken, so you might as well clear them all out at once.
I implemented a one-in, one-out mentality
I wasn't super strict about this, but if we came home with new clothes or toys or, most often, pets, I'd ask them to find a few things to get rid of to make room for the new things.
This logic makes so much sense to my kids. There's no judgment here, no "You have too much stuff," or "You can't take care of your things."
It's just a statement of fact: we only have room for a limited number of items in this house.
Sometimes we regift items instead of just throwing them out completely
We gave a lot of our favorite games and toys to younger kids. My children loved showing my friend's daughter how to play "Don't Break the Ice" and then boxing it up for her. They didn't want to keep it just because they'd enjoyed it when they were five.
In every house I've ever decluttered, if there was a cache of children's toys, it was there because the parents couldn't stand to get rid of them. The kids weren't interested.
What I've learned
What I discovered from doing this with my kids is that they actually liked living in a less cluttered space; they just didn't really know how to achieve it on their own.
Figuring out why we hold on to stuff can be hard, and we may not realize the emotional bond we have to something until it catches us off guard.
Like when I couldn't bring myself to let go of a little wooden egg and spoon game that my sisters and I had never used in childhood. It was my mother's, and knowing that she'd been lonely as a child made this old toy feel special, as though I was holding some of her precious memories in my hand.
I wanted to teach my kids to really look at their possessions and determine whether they were loved and used or merely things they were used to. Moving from childhood into adulthood is already fraught; cluttering the journey up with a bunch of extraneous possessions just makes it harder.
My advice: give decluttering with your kids a try. Ask your kid to find four things they don't need to own anymore. Then, resist the temptation to keep those things yourself.
