***Oops - I realized I put this in the wrong thread. I'm moving it. I'm not sure if I should delete it in the other thread or leave it there, but since it has to do with my personal Minimalist September goals, this thread seems more appropriate...lol!***
So far this month I've tackled my kiddos' clothes (in their room) and donated two huge bags of clothing, the large lawn and garden ones, to Goodwill. I did go through and discard shoes that had seen better days as well as set aside a pile to take to Goodwill. Also, I told my oldest son to pick out three stuffed animals to keep and picked out three for my youngest. My oldest ended up talking me into five, but since that was a significant improvement I let it go. I'm not aiming for minimalist perfection, but progress towards that end. I did make sure to get the bags out of the house asap before the kiddos could decide to look through them, change their mind, etc... I did mention to my kiddos that we're going to go through their room and choose toys to go to kids who don't have as many toys as they do. I also talked about how Santa will be bringing them new things before long and they need to make sure they have room for new stuff. I'm hoping I can kind of prep them for this. We'll see. In the end, I might have to be persuasive and talk them into getting rid of things I know they don't play with. But I wouldn't want to do their toys without them, even if it means we keep a bit more than I would like. We can always keep chipping away at it! I'm trying to emphasize the "these toys are going to kids who have less aspect" and hope that helps. We'll see! At some point I need to go down to the basement and go through tubs of clothing. I saved all of my oldest boy's clothing and honestly I'm glad I did because my youngest is exactly four years younger and all of the clothes have been in season and we wouldn't have had money to buy clothes with him. This one, however, is due in winter instead of summer so even if this ends up being a boy, a lot of the infant clothing will need to be replaced due to being off season. That being said, I have kept way too much. Additionally, our second DS did accumulate extra clothes here and there and there's no way we'll need all of it for future children. So, I'd like to go through the tubs and save the best and get rid of the rest. It would be wonderful if that could be accomplished before baby gets here. And actually it kind of needs to be so I know what I do have that can be used for our new baby. So I think that and toys will be my big goals for this month. I have other goals, but I have to be very realistic with the amount of time I have. Other than that, there's just this ongoing process of decluttering counters and surfaces. We have piles of papers and miscellaneous junk everywhere!
One big thing that will help is that we will be closing my home daycare business at the end of October. We've held onto so many things not because of personal attachment, but because they are sometimes necessary in the daycare. We also have more toddler toys than one family needs. So a lot of this will be tossed, donated, or sold once my daycare is officially closed. It's going to be a busy season!
On another note, when it comes to the kiddos toys I will throw out things that are definitely broken and cheap happy meal type toys when they're not paying attention. They've never asked about those kinds of things.