Tag Archives: clutter

6 items or less…apply this experiment to parenting

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Have you heard of the 6 items or less experiment?  It is a global phenomenon that sets out to see if a person can “survive” for 30 days with only 6 items of clothing (or less) from their closet.

As I thought about this minimalist approach to life (and having just watched “The Book of Eli” where Denzil Washington says “people kill for things we used to throw away”), I realized that this 6 items or less theory had a lot going for it and could be applied to many different parts of our lives.

So, today I’d like to list the 6 items I’d pull from my parenting rules closet.

  1. Help your child to master tasks and skills and develop individual responsibility.
  2. Encourage your child to value her own strengths and qualities.
  3. Help your child feel appreciated, loved and valued.
  4. Encourage your child to express his feelings, both positive and negative.
  5. Help your child to acknowledge and cope with her fears.
  6. Encourage your child to respect his body and feel safe in his environment.

Just 6 rules.  Follow them and you will be helping your child develop  a positive self-image.  You will also be building a life-long parent-child bond and creating balance and harmony for your entire family.

How many parenting rules do you have?

Carpet installation fiasco

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At 9am this morning, there was a knock on the door.  It was our carpet installers, here to install new carpeting for our downstairs floors.  For the past week, I had been working like a mad-man (or mad-woman) to clear off tables, empty bookcases and clean out cabinets so that the installers would be able to move the furniture in preparation to laying the carpeting.  Of course, it doesn’t help that our furniture is HUGE, a carryover from our days in a 14 room house.  Even though we sold, gave away, threw away LOTS of STUFF when we downsized to a small 6 room townhome, everything we have is BIG.

After the carpet installers came in, they spent an hour moving much of the furniture to other places (outside patio, garage) and they began measuring the floor so they could determine how the carpet should be laid.  When they went out to their truck to call the carpet store and were gone for quite a while, we began to worry.  And, as it turns out, we had good reason to worry.  When they returned, it was to tell us that the man who had done the measuring (from the carpet store) had under-measured the length of the living room by 2 feet!!!!!!  So, they had to move back all of the furniture and the carpet store is ordering a new length of carpet to be laid next Tuesday.  How frustrating!  Will I put back all of the books, knickknacks, and other STUFF that I had boxed up and put in the garage? You bet I won’t! 

I’ll wait at least until the carpet is down on the floor.  And maybe, if we haven’t needed the STUFF by then, we actually don’t need it at all. 

That’s one way to get rid of clutter!

I’d love to hear other carpet installation horror stories…perhaps it will make me feel better.

Andy Rooney: Life is like a gadget drawer

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This morning I wrote a post about yesterday’s 60 Minutes segment with Andy Rooney.  As the day went on, I began to think about how a kitchen gadget drawer is a lot like life and parenting.  We accumulate “stuff” during our life…material things like cars, homes, appliances, clothing, lamps, and books…sometimes doubles and triples of items we don’t even use.  We store up memories, both good and bad (the bad ones sometimes haunting us as we try to move forward with our lives).  We hold on to feelings, even the negative ones (sometimes especially the negative ones).  And, when it comes to parenting, we often repeat behaviors of our own parents we swore we would never do.  Have you ever said something to your child and looked around to see if your mother was standing there, because what came out of your mouth was something you had often heard her say.

I think this happens to most of us.  Maybe I can take Andy Rooney’s advice and dump out everything in the drawer (of my behavior, reactions to others, feelings, memories), look it over, and make sure I want to keep it before I put it back. 

But I doubt it will be as easy as cleaning the kitchen gadget drawer.