On teaching Discardia to your kids

"Have nothing in your home which is not beautiful or useful or both." Dinah Sanders on Discardia.

I have been going through things in the house with an eye towards removing clutter, prompted by a book on feng shui and clutter that i got from the library. That was useful, and helped dig out a number of piles that had gotten too big.

Somehow though I had forgotten that Discardia was nearing. This quarter's dates are 22 Sep 2005 - 3 Oct 2005. That's a good long time to actually take a look at the things that have piled up and make a decision to deal with those piles instead of just staring at them every day in frustration.

My goal for this quarter is very simple. I'm going to try to teach my son Saul about this holiday, and we'll go through his bedroom and weed out some of the books and toys he is no longer attached to to make room for the new things that have come into his life. I think that's really doable, and that if I try to do that every Discardia with him it will make a lot more difference than getting upset that his room is a mess (of course it's a mess, it's too full).

UPDATE:

This actually went pretty well this afternoon. We concentrated on the overwhelming pile of books.

Saul took out his non-working computer (an old Toshiba T1000SE laptop that I used 13 yrs ago - still in one piece, batteries long since dead) and used its keyboard to categorize the books one by one into piles. "M" was "me", or keep; "G" was "go away"; "JB" was "Jonathan's book", for board books for his 7 mo old brother; and "JTB" was "Jonathan's toddler book" to keep until later. A few old bus schedules made it into the "N" or recycle pile.

It took a while since after sorting through the piles he found half a dozen books he hadn't seen for a long time and wanted to look at. The net of it is a banker's box full that can be either stored, sent away, or handed down. Not bad.

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Comments

[John Hritz]

I love this idea. Kids have more stuff than money at Saul's age and it gets them started on understanding giving (particulary anonymous giving). I'll be interested in hearing how the first round goes.

[Denise]

I'm anxious to hear how this goes with your son. I'm pondering doing it with our children for the next discordia session. The timing of this one is just horrible (not to mention I didn't pre-plan it into our schedules - the dates snuck up on me, darn it).

Good luck, good luck, good luck!

[Michaela Stephens]

My younger sister and I shared a room during the summers that I was home from college and she was a knickknack addict. She also had a bunch of crafts and projects sitting around. Every summer I would usually get her to go through her stuff and organize it and discard a good many things. She would groan and moan about it, but I tried to be as helpful as I was firm. I never MADE her throw anything away, but made suggestions and asked her questions that would help her gauge the level of utility and attachment.
Just last night I brought up the subject of discarding and she went at her desk and worked through it all while talking to my over the phone about it! (It should tell you how much I enjoy discarding when I say that I found the whole operation highly interesting, even when on the other line and unable to see what was going on!) She knew what to do and did it all by herself! Big sister has trained her well!