I want to talk about the idea of only owning what you love. Why it’s important and how we can teach this to our kids. We do this easily when we ask them to choose which books they love the most…and get rid of the rest!
Its a big ask, I know, getting rid of books!! But owning what you love in your home means that you won’t be forever tidying up and looking after things that mean nothing to anybody.
Keeping things that are precious to you, treasures, things that are useful and you enjoy using.
This is always going to be the basis for keeping things minimal and your house less cluttered.
Your kids know where their things are because they’re using them all the time.
My daughter has decided to keep all of the things that she has enjoyed reading over the years. Even the books from being much smaller. She has one shelf, it’s not immaculate. It’s full, but not cluttered either. She knows what’s there, and it’s not in any special order. It’s just what she chooses to keep.
I did realize that we keep A LOT of on the Kindle in Ebook format, so there are a lot of those. If they read a book that’s special we’ll work out a way to get a hard copy.
If I let her buy every book, or if we just kept it all, there would be three times these many bookshelves. But we choose to keep the ones that we love.
I mean, some of these books are so old. One that I had when I was a child, and some I read to my oldest who is 25 now. Books that he had when he was small, and I’ve read a hundred times over, I’m sure.
My son, he doesn’t treasure as much stuff in the way of books. He has a few series that he enjoyed, Roald Dahl, Harry Potter, but he also has Pokemon and Lego manuals. He also has a few
It’s just a simple bookshelf that’s filled with items of value for that person, decluttering doesn’t have to be a major overhaul.
The end result doesn’t even have to be immaculate.
Your kids need to have a space they can relax in, that’s filled with things they love. It doesn’t have to be that they have nothing. They keep what they love, and that’s it.
We could buy them 1000 books, but if they don’t even know or care that they own them, what’s the point?
I mean, seriously, what’s the point?
And so, my encouragement to you is, ask your kids.
Ask them what it is that they want to keep. What books do they love?
Sit down and filter through them one by one. “Do we really need to keep this?
If we’ve got shelves and shelves of books, do we need to keep them all? Is there some other kid that’s going to enjoy them more? Is there some other way that we can keep these books without having to have them physically in our space?
Maybe books are so incredibly precious to your young person they can’t bear to part with a single one, then there will be other items in their room they will be able to clutter. Maybe they have too many clothes, shoes or toys?
I hope that it can be an encouragement to you that decluttering doesn’t have to be an awful thing to do. It’s making sure that you own only what you need and love, and know where it is.
