Garage Sale (Minimizing with a kid)
This weekend, my daughter and I hosted a garage sale. And while spending a few hours in my garage on a beautiful Saturday morning is not usually my idea of fun, I have to say that I was thrilled to do it in this case.
When I first started trying to minimize our belongings, my daughter was small - the first time I thought about it, she was probably around 3. Then I tried again in a lot of earnest when she was around 5.
It seemed cruel to try to get rid of a little kid’s toys. And at the same time I was trying to reduce, I also wasn’t doing anything to stem the flow of toys into our house. So it was a constant struggle. How do I get her to let go of things? Why is there still so much stuff ?
It seemed that literally every single thing she’d ever owned was precious to her. Trying to go through items with her was like pulling teeth. We’d go through each item in her room and it was always keep, keep, keep. I was frustrated. I sort of gave up on getting her on board.
But then I realized that I was thinking about it all wrong. Each time we practiced going through her items, and sorting into keep, maybe, and get rid of, we were flexing her judgment muscles. And even if only 3 things ended up in the get rid of pile, we were making progress, though I couldn’t see it right then. Even if things she never ever played with didn’t get chosen to go, she was learning. We also started to have more conversations when we were choosing to acquire new items. When we discussed Christmas and birthday presents, we talked about where that item would live, how much she thought she would use it. And we started reducing the number of gifts.
Last weekend, we went through another segment of her toys that she had rarely played with. I was filled with regret, because that section of toys represented a significant amount of money. I thought of the time and money I had wasted, and wished I could take it all back. That I could go back in time and tell me of 5 years ago we needed to be modeling living with less better than that, and not facilitating the acquisition of so many toys. When it came down to it, that big pile was entirely my fault.
But then, she started going through the toys quite ruthlessly, choosing to get rid of most of it. In fact, it was so many things I felt overwhelmed by the idea of listing them all to sell online. So we hatched the idea of doing a garage sale. She was enthusiastic about it, following up with me all week to advertise the sale online, to text people I knew might be interested. She helped me move tables into the garage. She made every single price label herself. She displayed the items on the table just so. She added up the totals and made change. I WAS SO PROUD. Here she was, joyfully letting go of things, taking responsibility of getting rid of the items, and basically running the show.
I saw that the many, many times over the years we had gone through toys and she had been unable to let much, if anything, go, was all really practice. And now, at nearly 10 years old, the ability to let go is coming much easier. That modeling getting rid of my own items, her seeing me run my own garage sales and take trips to the charity shop were really making an impact.
So is there a magic formula for minimizing with kids? Definitely not. But if you keep putting in the work, you can plant the seeds.