Project: Simplify. (Part One, Environment)

Shortly before we left for our trip up north, I started a book that's been sitting around for a couple months now, just waiting for me to eventually take the time to sit down and read it. It's called Simplicity Parenting, by Kim John Payne and Lisa M. Ross. I was hoping that our time away would afford me the opportunity to (a) read the book, in its entirety, in chunks of more-than-3-pages-at-a-time, (b) turn it over a bit and (c) spend a lot of time talking it over with Joel who, for all his good intentions, just isn't much of a reader.

And did it ever.

See, the basic premise of this book is that our children are being overwhelmed by too much--Payne says, "too much stuff, too many choices, too much information and too fast"--and that, by simplifying our lifestyles (environment, schedules, even our food), we allow our kids (and ourselves!) to actually live more fully, develop more naturally. We waste time and money trying to fix the problems that we've created by wasting so much time and money in the first place.

The idea of simplifying our home and our lives wasn't brand-new to me; it's a process we began several months ago. But I got all sorts of useful ideas from this book, as well as exploring some aspects of simplification that hadn't occurred to me. I want to share the changes we've made/are making, but I can already tell I'm on the brink of a verbal explosion (it's what happens when I get really excited about something), so I'm going to break it down into several different posts, and just address it one area at a time. I'll begin (as, in fact, we did) with our environment.

Much of this book was sort of an affirmation of the way we've been headed for a while now, especially where simplifying the environment goes. Many months ago, I was sitting in a living room littered with toys, feeling frustrated by my kids' seeming unwillingness to clean up after themselves and overwhelmed by the state of our house in general. Looking at the mess, I saw it through my kids' eyes and thought, it's really not reasonable to expect them to clean all of this up. While I've always kept their toys well organized, there was just too much. So I decided to start getting rid of toys until the kids could handle taking care of what they had.

I didn't want it to feel punitive to the kids, like, "You didn't clean up your toys, so I'm going to take them away," so I worked mostly after they were in bed. The criteria I used for sorting what stayed and what went was basically (1) how much does it get used right now, and how "well," (2) how much do my kids love this particular toy, (3) how "good" a toy is it. One night, I loaded up all the toys I wanted to get rid of into opaque plastic tubs, and put them in the garage: Toy Purgatory, if you will. This is the place where toys go to wait and see if anyone asks for them, looks for them, or otherwise makes me regret having weeded them out. They stayed out there for a week or two before I began getting rid of them (and, for the record, not a single toy was asked after).

The change in the house was compelling--the toys that remained were played with more, and "better," and were cleaned up afterwards. It was so compelling, in fact, that I did it again a couple months later. And then again a month or so after that. All told, I reduced the number of toys in the house by...70%, maybe? I don't know--but a lot. I also weeded through books, games, puzzles and DVDs.

I didn't hear a single complaint from my kids. In fact, all I heard from my kids was the sound of them playing even more with the toys that were left.

Next, I started on clothes. I actually don't own a ton of clothes (if you know me, you're probably not surprised), but I still weeded out a few things, and several pair of shoes. But my kids have plenty of clothes, so I focused a lot of my attention there. My goal was to move all the clothes into locations that were more convenient for dressing and for putting away.

In our bedroom, we have a double closet, with ample hanging space, and two dressers. My goal was to fit all our family's clothes in one place. I began by storing all of my kids out-of-season clothing in tubs in the basement--stuff I thought would still fit in the fall, but that was too warm for summer. Then I sorted out anything that was outgrown (if it was Lucie's, it got stored away for Fiona, otherwise it went in the "get rid of" pile). Next I sorted out things that were ugly, impractical, or just plain superfluous. When I was finished, each kid's clothes occupied a single drawer in a normal-sized dresser, with hanging space in the closet for the girls' dresses and a couple of Sam's shirts.

We still have a ways to go, but eliminating so much of the stuff in our house has been a really good step toward simplifying our lives at home.

A toddler serves as a wonderful reminder that children do not need us to entertain them. The world around them really is entertainment enough.

Oh, and if you're wondering where all of this stuff went: I sold it or I gave it away. First I sold the nice stuff online (we take relatively good care of our things, so I was able to sell things for decent prices--enough, in fact, to buy a super-sweet bike). Then, I started having garage sales for charity. I'm part of a team, with 5 of my friends, who will be walking in the Susan G. Komen 3-Day For the Cure event in a few weeks, and the fundraising requirements were pretty intimidating ($2300 per participant, which is $13,800 as a team). We held several HUGE garage sales--full of all my stuff, and lots of stuff from everyone else, as well as a few generous "stuff donations" from friends and family--and raised nearly $3000 towards our goal. If I saw something special and knew someone who would love it, I held it out and gave it to them. Whatever was left at the end of the garage sales, I donated.

But creating an ideal environment, especially for our kids, wasn't *just* about eliminating things. I actually *added* some things to the house, too. The biggest change was in our basement. Previously, our finished basement housed (in addition to a guest bed and our laundry room) a "TV room" and a "play room." The TV room had a large entertainment center with a TV/DVD player (we don't have cable or other TV service) and a bunch of DVDs, a couch and a bean bag. The play room had a couple of shelves that were full of bins, which were full of toys. The basement was getting almost no use, except when Joel's parents would visit and sleep in the guest bed for a couple nights. We never went down there to watch movies. Ever. The kids almost never went down there to play (they had plenty of toys elsewhere). When we had friends over, with their kids, all the kids would often go down to the basement to play, but they mostly ran around playing active games (yet were always sure to dump every single bin of toys out in the course of their play, so there was always an enormous mess to clean up when they left).

So we decided to make the space more suited to our needs, and to the use it was already getting. First, we emptied the "TV room" out entirely. The couch went in the smaller "play room," the entertainment center went in our bedroom. It kept the TV out of our "living space" (we may eventually get rid of the TV altogether, but we've always insisted that it at least be out of sight, not in the middle of our living space, just begging the kids to beg the adults to turn it on. Just too much begging), gave us some extra storage in our room and, most importantly, left the largest room in the basement totally empty. Then we got rid of nearly all the toys that were in the "play room." Then we got a slide, a swing, a ladder, and rings, and set up a veritable jungle gym in the basement. There's nothing to clean up, the space is getting used, and during a long Michigan winter, my kids and their friends have an appropriate place to burn off a little energy.

The new basement playspace, viewed from the stairs.

Another view.

The results of these changes to our environment have been pretty amazing. My kids are playing more, playing better, getting lost in their play--sometimes together, sometimes by themselves--more often. They go outside without prompting more. They imagine more, create more, invent more--and all from less.

I'm seeing a lot more of this sort of play from my kids these days--heading outside to make their own fun out of what they find.

Long before I had even heard of Simplicity Parenting, I realized that we had accumulated far too much stuff and that most of it needed to go. The process, for me, was easy and pleasurable. And the results were the fuel I needed to begin making some other changes to our lifestyle that wouldn't come nearly as easily or naturally to us.