Clearing out
The closet in the boy’s room is full of shevles. This is a good thing because my boys have lots of space to store their stuff. Unfortunately Link and Patches’ idea of cleaning up is to shove everything onto the shelves at random. If something falls off the shelf, they shrug and walk away. If I catch them doing this, they’ll pick the toy up and shove it back on in a slightly different location. We had reached the point where the shelves were shoved so full of precarious piles that adding anything created an avalanche. It was time to clean.
I decided to clean without the help of my boys. In theory the ideal way to do this would be to make them help me sort and teach them how to decide what needs to go. That would be a good thing to do, but I really did not want to spend hours arguing over keeping scraps of paper. I grabbed a garbage bag and started to clean when they were not paying attention. I started by scraping everything off the shelves into a gigantic pile in the middle of the room. It took me two days to sort through that pile. I threw out broken toys. I accumulated a pile of toys to give to thrift stores. These were the toys that never get played with. They just get scattered when the kids are looking for something else. I threw out scraps of paper and old school worksheets. I am confident that neither boy will ever miss any of the things I got rid of. I sorted pieces of games so that they are back together and playable. I put sets of toys together. I placed everything neatly on the shelves so that the boys can find the things that they want.
Link came in when I was part way through this process. He was delighted to be able to find all of the pieces to toys in the same locations. He thanked me several times for the cleaning work I had done. I’m glad he was so happy. I was a little worried that he’d freak out because I went through his stuff. But apparently being able to find toys to play with is worth the risk that Mom might have gotten rid of something.
Patches is also pleased at the new state of his room. Now hopefully we can teach the boys that “Put it away” doesn’t mean “Shove it on a shelf at random.”