Reforming a Pack Rat Child

In preparation for the new bunk beds and dresser arriving for our girl room, we moved the old furniture out of the room.

My 6 year old daughter slept in the guest room during the change-over but loved the emptiness of her room. She was thrilled to sit in the middle of the wide open floor space with a few books and declare it her "reading room"!

This same daughter is a pack rat by nature (confession: she comes from 2 packrat parents but we are getting better and learning life is better with less stuff) and in recent months her room had become too crammed full of stuff. I've been telling her once we re-do the room, we are going to have less in there on purpose and it will be better. She'd get very uneasy about just which things we were going to get rid of. I told her we'd decide together.

So, I couldn't help pointing out to her how nice her room was when it was empty!

Today, I gave her a basket I'd moved out of her room, one she had stuffed full of tons of junk (treasures!) and a trash bag and told her to go through it.

I quickly noticed her "keep" pile was a lot bigger than her "trash" pile and decided she needed some parameters. I gave her a clear plastic box and told her "If it can fit in here, you can keep it."

I left her to her sorting.

When she called out that she was finished, I should not have been surprised to go find the box completely filled to the brim.

Have you ever seen such a box of junk?!!!

But, as she demonstrated, it closes!

And can be tucked away out of sight under the new bed!

Now I just have to hold her to the rule, "Any new treasures have to fit in this box, too, and if they don't fit you have to get rid of something else to make room to keep them."