Sometimes Less Is More
By Stacey | Posted on May 30, 2009 | 1 Comment
I wanted to share some of my “less is more” list with you. Read on and you’ll see what I mean.
Less is more:
- Clothing – you do laundry constantly anyway. Save some of the brain juice you’ve been using trying to store all those extra clothes your kids don’t really need. Give the extras to other families, sell them, or donate them at a local charity. But what about saving them for hand-me-downs? I feel your pain. You look at a shirt or dress and say, “Suzie doesn’t need this but Janie may when she gets to this size.” My best advice is keep a few things over and above Suzie’s needs and give the rest away. Even if Suzie ruins a few things, you’ll still have about the same number of items left that you dressed her in for Janie to use later. You will have forgotten about the item in question when Janie gets to this size anyway. And if you have a network of caring friends and family, you’re likely to have more stuff coming your way for Janie in the future too. Don’t get confused here. I’m not saying we don’t save clothes to pass down later. We have lived with an army of plastic storage containers filled with waiting hand-me-downs in our garage for years. I’m saying that it’s helpful to trim down the quantity of clothes you maintain in the closets for the current season for each child.
- Toys – figure out which ones have true play value and get rid of the rest. I’ll write about our enduring favorites in a later post. Find some friends to trade toys with to brighten up your supply without spending money. When your children tire of them, just sanitize them and send them home!
Category: Making Life Work
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One Response to “Sometimes Less Is More”
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June 4th, 2009 @ 12:22 am
THANK YOU! for giving me “permission” to seriously purge some kid clothes. I’ve been itching to do it, but it seemed so irresponsible.
I’ve got three kids 4 and under; “handing down” the never-ending surplus seems so logical, but it never seems to work out in practice.
The season is wrong for the younger child, (your older was wearing 18month size during winter and your younger needs summer clothing)
Or the younger kid gets an unexpected raft of nicer things from Grandma’s garage-saling so your hand-me-down baggage remains surplus junk.
Or there’s an opposite-sex kid between the two same-sex sibs, and you aren’t really going to dress her in bulldozer-themed playclothes. (or him in flower-embroidered jeans.)
Or you plain forget about some hidden tub of clothes till the younger kid has already outgrown that size. Ugh.
SO NOT WORTH THE EFFORT. lol.
My first thought upon discovering #4 was on its way was, “dear God, what am I going to do with all the clothes???”