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pumpkinmom
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I have a little hoarder! No matter what, he can't keep his room clean. I do understand, but about once a week (or less) I tell him he has to clean his room and explain to him what I want done. He still won't do it! Today I said I would help him with the project. He started crying when I brought in the trash bag.  Which kills me! But, it has to be done. He holds onto everything! I gave him a "junk" basket in which he is allowed to keep whatever "junk" he wants. The rule is when it becomes full and is over flowing we go through and clean it out and throw stuff away. I gave him choices and still tears. Breaks my heart! Everytime he turned his back I was throwing stuff in the trash.  I have done everything I can to make his room easy to clean. Everything has it's own place. I don't require it to always be clean. I just expect it to be cleaned once a week. Am I asking too much?
He doesn't have room for one more toy! We still have stuff he has outgrown, but because of his separation issues, they are still around. I told him that he won't be able to get any more toys (including at Christmas time) unless we get rid of stuff. He still wouldn't part with anything. I have tried being sneaking and saying there are kids out there that don't have nice toys like yours and they would be so happy to get them. Still won't part with it. Now I could just say that they have to be gone and get rid of stuff, but it really hurts my heart to do that (which I have). It is no fun watching an 8 year old cry! Any ideas?
(I recently rearranged the closet to give him more room and got a new piece of furniture for more room. So, I have tried hard to allow more stuff in our home. I am considering giving him a bigger "junk" basket, but I really would have to get rid of stuff to make room for it.  )
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
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mamaslearning
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Maybe if you take a picture of the things he doesn't want to forget? Then you could make a scrapbook or photo album of all his past collections? Might make it easier for him to part with items if he can still look at them when every he wants. (He might just keep things because of associated memories, and not just because of what it is?  )
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Aagot
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You might have dad take him someplace fun while you clean. Don't get rid of anything permanently, except real trash, just store almost everything out of sight. Leave only a handful of his most prized posessions. When he comes home he may be shocked (or not notice). If he expresses concern, tell him it is all still here and when he wants something he can tell you. Maybe make a special time for retrevial. The secret is he has to know exactly what he wants and only one thing/ group at a time. Not "I want all my stuff". Then set a date in your mind, maybe 6 months, if he has not asked for it by then, out it goes. You may still end up with too much in his room but chances are he won't miss much.
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JodieLyn
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Clean more frequently. Really. By waiting a week at a time he has more time to become attached AND even more important, it's way more overwhelming to deal with a week's accumulation than just a day's worth.
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jawgee
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I hate to say this, because it sounds sneaky, but I wait for my son to be away (like last week when he was at scout camp) and I do a deep clean. I put everything in its place, and take out anything that he has outgrown. I *used to* save the things I took out and hide them in the attic for a few weeks to make sure he didn't ask for anything. Now I realize that he never remembers anything that I take out. Really. He sees his clean room and is pleased that he has more room to play and build with his Legos.
Otherwise, for maintenance, part of his daily chores is to tidy in his room for 10 minutes. That tends to keep the room reasonably clean.
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Erin
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Cassie
 Really encouraging you to 'stick to your guns.' When one of my teens was little he was a real bower bird, but I regularly made him clean his room and regularly made all my children cull. He found it so hard, but today he is quite minimal about what he keeps, not over the top but not a hoarder.
The longer I parent the more I realise that we need to instil good habits, we are doing them (and their future families) a major service.
You have the right idea, help him because for him it would be too overwhelming otherwise. making him assess everything is good, he will improve with time.
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herdingkittens
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JodieLyn wrote:
| Clean more frequently. Really. By waiting a week at a time he has more time to become attached AND even more important, it's way more overwhelming to deal with a week's accumulation than just a day's worth. |
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Excellent point. We have "tidy room" as part of our children's after dinner helps, and it is a HUGE help. Takes them a few minutes and they can wake up in a tidy space. If they do not get it done before bed, they have to finish in the morning before breakfast . Plus, if it is part of their routine, then it becomes a nice habit.
That being said, I have a child who is collecting "Robot Parts"  , which is overtaking their personal bin (basically your idea of the container for their own stuff that cannot overflow), and I have made a few deductions from the supply while they were out of the house. So, yeah, I will come in a do a clean out if things get out of hand, but very rarely, because I think they try to keep it up so I won't have to.
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SallyT
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This has been a struggle with my youngest daughter -- I completely sympathize! We do room-straightening after breakfast daily, and we generally try to stay on top of things, but somehow everything ends up in this child's room, and she has a huge emotional attachment to it ALL. So while she's proactive about cleaning and likes to have her floor clear, her floor space will slowly start to shrink, as the levels of stuff around the edges mount up . . .
I have often waited for her to be away, and then purged things. Outgrown clothes get packed up for Goodwill (she always says she's saving them for her children . . . sorry, sweetie . . . ), and excess stuffed animals, which seem to breed in the corners, get bagged in garbage bags and stored in our big closet.
For me the biggest help is . . . that child's older sister, who's home from college. She just says, "Wow, this is a rat's nest, we've got to get rid of stuff," and gets on with it. She just last week helped the 8yo do a big cleanup; this time we bought a couple of big plastic bins to store things in in the closet, so that they were there to access if she wanted, but not in her room (out of sight out of mind does work pretty well, fortunately).
So if anybody wants to borrow a nice de-cluttering college student . . . :)
Seriously, I understand how a child's emotional involvement with *stuff* can make it difficult to instill good habits, because the emotional part of it just gets so tiring. My boys can be slobs, given half a chance, but they don't *care* that much about the crud on the floor, and they sure don't care about outgrown clothes. Dealing with someone who has a deep personal relationship with every piece of paper in his/her room, let alone every stuffed animal and article of clothing, can become exhausting and de-motivating very quickly. But as parents we do have to take charge of these situations, even if it does mean attacking the problem in the absence of the problemee, to get things under control, so that the child can a) learn to detach a little and b) master his material possessions instead of being mastered by them.
As the adult, you are right to push to have this happen, whatever you have to do to make it happen, tears or no tears. A child isn't mature enough to see that what you're doing is offering him a kind of freedom, but that is what you're doing.
Good luck!
Sally
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Mackfam
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I, too, have at least one child that has a very particular attachment to stuff. I just gave a talk on managing toys, with an emphasis on how to help the child that attaches by giving him/her some concrete tools to work with. The workshop I offered was based on this article I wrote: Toys!! My Thoughts on Choosing, Organizing, and Maintaining Toys.
For the child that hoards all kinds of stuff in their rooms, we have some concrete tools to help that child. I have done the "whisking away under cover of night" of some things. But I don't with this particular child because at some point I realized that it wasn't helping the child learn how to detach. He wasn't aware that things were just disappearing so he wasn't forming a good habit in detachment. And I began to realize that when this child is on his own and I'm not there to come in and retrieve random socks and trash bits from his domicile under cover of night things will again pile up and he will still not have the tools he needs to sort, order and let go of some stuff. So....I started doing things a little differently because I wanted to give the child that attaches to stuff a vocabulary that includes detachment, giving things away to bless others, an understanding that trash is trash and some healthy boundaries to work within so that they have ownership of their choices.
Before I get to the actual part about the child that hoards and detachment, I want to lay the foundation of what we do because I think everything works together pretty well.
** We clean bedrooms once weekly.
** We allow only 4 or 5 toys out to be played with at a time. This is the child's choice.
** We keep extra toys in a locked closet.
** If the room is too difficult for the children to clean, we subtract one or two toys from the group that is left out.
** Kids can exchange toys in and out of the toy closet ONLY if their room is clean.
** On deep room clean days when I am helping, we line the wall with toy groups.
** We gather all the parts and pieces and trash bits into one big laundry basket and distribute what we can back to toy groups.
** The leftover stuff and the broken toys are usually what we have a problem with.
** We make a pile of stuff that **I** would either give away or throw away.
** For the trash pile, we call it trash and put it in the trash. The child helps. If he disputes something he can remove it and put it in an undecided pile which we'll deal with later. (this happens to us all the time!)
** For the broken toys/old toys/toys no longer played with/toys I'd REALLY, REALLY like to move along to another home....we talk about the pile together...nothing crazy, just identify the big pile of stuff, identify that nothing here seems to be enjoyed any more, talk about how each of these "things" is a blessing from God and they are no longer blessing us and that it is ok to move them along so that they can bless another home. Sometimes, and this has only happened recently after completing this room cleaning/detachment exercise for several years with this particular child...but sometimes they will immediately agree to get rid of stuff, or move stuff on. GREAT!! But if he/she protests, this is what I do:** I look at the pile and guess how many things are there....so let's say the pile has about 6 things in it (this is only possible if you REGULARLY clean spaces and limit the number of things out at a time...otherwise your pile will be GIGANTIC!).
** I would say something like, "Of the six things in this pile, you can choose two things to keep. You and I are going to decide to give the rest of this pile away.
** Detachment is HARD for these children so I try to stretch them toward it gently and reasonably. Having them choose the two things they'll keep seems reasonable and it forces them to consider which of the things in that pile have the most play value to them, thus prioritizing and ending up with two as their choice.
** Let the child choose two items and set them aside.
** Put the rest of the stuff in a bag to give away. Have the child help you do this. They are actively engaged in their own detachment! They're actively learning HOW to detach. There is one more group of items to deal with: the paper stuff they like to keep.** I provide one bin with a lid - you can choose the size of the bin for your child. I like to give them notebooks with sheet protectors for keeping special articles, and maybe other containers for other *special collections* but the paper bin is just for the paper bits that the child considers special. The bin has a finite volume and does not expand....it's just an extension of those healthy boundaries I'm trying to help this child see and acknowledge. All the paper bits that are special can be kept in this bin....but we don't add extra bins once this one is full....ONLY ONE BIN!
** What to do if the bin is FULL and the child can't decide what to keep/get rid of/how to make room? (Remember, the room should be completely clean at this point, and this is the last task.) Dump the bin contents out onto the child's bed along with all the new *paper stuff* that he now wants to keep. Put the bin on the bed. Let the child know that he has the day to figure out what goes in the bin and what will stay out. At bedtime, if the bed isn't cleaned off and special paper things put away in the special-paper-stuff-bin...then YOU will decide what stays and what goes. This is VERY motivating...because they KNOW EXACTLY HOW MUCH YOU'LL KEEP!!! *0* !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! ========================================
Well, that's my strategy! Helping my super sentimental kids learn how to detach from stuff is so important!!! Merciful heavens - can you imagine how much their wives and husbands will thank us one day????? I'm seeing fruit from this exercise because my child that wouldn't part with paper corners of books at one point....can now identify things in a more detached way and move them along without much help at all from me. Wahoo!!! 
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Jen Mackintosh
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SallyT
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Yes! We do that pile thing, too. And sometimes, especially as this child gets older, I don't have to say much to get her to realize that some things really have become trash -- somehow having things sorted out before her and then having to choose between them does help her to see the difference between "worth it" and "not worth it," rather than picking up some little broken piece of a toy on its own and fiiiiiiiiiiiixating on it ("But I looooooooooove this plastic shard! I play with this plastic shard! It is my treasure!"). Seeing it in the context of other things really does help to put the plastic shard into its proper perspective.
I have often felt that the first part of my teaching is simply to acclimate the child to the idea that it's really more fun and pleasant to live in a reasonably orderly room. But as you say, Jen, the real teaching happens when you have to move to the next step: An Orderly Atmosphere Doesn't Just Happen.
Being 8 and not 6 has made a huge difference for my particular child; as I've seen with my older children, being 12 and not 8 will make an even bigger difference. Being 18 and not 12 is even better . . . then she can come back and organize me!
Sally
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Mackfam
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SallyT wrote:
| somehow having things sorted out before her and then having to choose between them does help her to see the difference between "worth it" and "not worth it," rather than picking up some little broken piece of a toy on its own and fiiiiiiiiiiiixating on it ("But I looooooooooove this plastic shard! I play with this plastic shard! It is my treasure!"). Seeing it in the context of other things really does help to put the plastic shard into its proper perspective. |
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Exactly this, Sally! You've hit the toy nail on the head! Not only is the pile providing that context, but there is a choice to make within that context and the child must own the choice. It forces them to consider play value and prioritize.
SallyT wrote:
| Being 8 and not 6 has made a huge difference for my particular child; as I've seen with my older children, being 12 and not 8 will make an even bigger difference. Being 18 and not 12 is even better . . . then she can come back and organize me! |
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This is very true, too. I think that providing those tools to detach and being patient with children as they naturally mature allows for a home that is relaxed and moving toward order. My older children can now be counted on to be the assistants to the younger children as they tidy, order and purge, and my oldest dd sounds just like yours, Sally! If she sees that her little sister's room is getting out of hand, she'll just instinctively say to her, "It's time to do some tidying and put some toys away - there is too much out for you to keep clean!"
Now, at a certain point I would have just attributed that to a natural girly tidiness, but now I see my older son doing that, too. And HE is the one that insisted on keeping the smallish corner of a paper missal that had been torn off and given to him by his four month old sister! So I have concluded that detaching and order are reasonable habits that we can nurture and assist our children in developing!
And following the rhythm of Holy Mother Church and doing some of these deeper cleans during Lent and Advent provides even more context and meaning. I go through my spaces, too, and lead by example ordering and detaching and giving away (and it isn't always easy!!!). The child sees that I detach, too, and it makes it a family language rather than something imposed only on those that cherish plastic shards. And it's the language of our faith, so we are able to anchor this in the spiritual realm as we speak to the freedom we have to follow Christ as we detach from excess stuff. Detaching helps us to rightly order material blessings as gifts from God, given to us to help us serve Him, and we can enjoy them. When they no longer help us in serving Him, or they are no longer that blessing, we can let them go.
Good discussion, Sally! Thanks for chiming in!
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Jen Mackintosh
Wife to Rob, mom to dd 19, ds 16, ds 11, dd 8, and dd 3
Wildflowers and Marbles
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pumpkinmom
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This has been so helpful! I was feeling that I was doing my child wrong by making him clean and get rid of stuff he had an attachment to. Now I see that I am just helping to create good habits. It is so hard not to think I am doing wrong when tears are involved!
Thank you Jen for taking the time to write your wonderful post. It really spoke to me and I can't wait to dig in some more.
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Cassie
Homeschooling my little patch of Ds-14 and Ds-10
Tending the Pumpkin Patch
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SallyT
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Yes, Lent and Advent! In Advent we (that is, I, the dictatrix) always take that line from "People Look East" as our theme: "Make your house fair, as you are able/Trim the hearth and set the table!" Those are both such good seasons for purging/sacrificing/making ready, and good times for us as mothers to teach by example.
Cassie, I know how hard it is to be confronted with somebody's emotions, and to feel like Meanie Baddie Mom. My girls are especially good at playing this particular card ("Waaaaaa! I am so persecuted! My mother is so meeeeeeeean!"), though boys can do it, too. I have to remind myself that I'm dealing with people who really can't see the big picture -- yes, what I ask of them sometimes really does seem unfair, BECAUSE THEY'RE SEEING IT FROM A CHILD'S INCOMPLETE PERSPECTIVE." Not that we see things completely ourselves, because we're not God, but if we think of how limited our adult human perspective is compared to God's, then we can imagine how limited our child's perspective is compared to ours. It helps so much to think ourselves about the big picture, and to make ourselves keep thinking about it even (especially) when confronted with a weeping victim of apparent cosmic injustice.
Hang in there!
Sally
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CatholicMommy
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In our home, I not only come from a childhood of BEING the hoarder, but my son is right there with me!
Just to repeat a few things from above that really worked for us:
---routine cleaning (daily; every 12 hours if necessary - before lunch, this corner must be decluttered; before dinner, general cleaning; evening, another corner or box --- and I mean DEcluttered, not just moved around)
---packing it up by category and hiding it away. Go for one specific item (and do NOT look at the other items!). If after 1 year (I'd love 6 months, but it doesn't work for us), it hasn't been touched, go ahead and look one more time (there might be something that I said during the last year "I wish I had XYZ" but had forgotten I already owned it!!! So now I can pull it out and hopefully have NOT bought another in the meantime -- or you might find some things that you are perfect gifts for someone in the family or friends, rather than just taking it all to a donation drop-off).
Then donate the rest.
---don't buy new things during the time of storing items away (for the reasons stated above). During a time I was living in tiny spaces and moving around a lot, with much of my belongings in 4 different storage areas, I ended up accumulating more than 5 sets of dishes (15+ if you count all the "partial sets").
---Help the child consider the plan for his space - work, study, play, etc. Lay out the areas/categories. Then if it doesn't fit, it GOES.
---We have one box we call the scrapbook box. Once a year we go through and make a scrapbook of his favorite work or projects from the last year. This includes school and fun stuff (so could be two binders) - it all has to fit into sheet protectors or hole-punched and inserted. My son tends to find things he'd rather not keep at this point as well, which is helpful.
---No "new" until all "old" is used up. So for me, no new cross-stitch projects until the old ones are completed. Or it could be unrelated: no new legos until such-and-such book project is done and cleaned up.
---Lent and Advent are BIG purge times.
---And once in a while (Lent and Advent) do what my mom did: if it's out of place, it goes in a pile on the floor. Then Every. Single. Piece must be touched, picked up, decided upon, and placed. A very conscious decision - not just swooping up a pile of legos (that might have marbles mixed in) and dumping in the lego tub ;)
Now, this was cruel, but necessary. So don't do this every week!
And, when desperate, I have created boxes of papers to go through "later" - then out of further desperation, put it on my son's school to-do list as "environmental maintenance" - he selects and brings the box and I know it is HIS schoolwork, so I end up actually doing it. He becomes my runner, so that when we are done, more than half the box is in the trash; the rest is filed or in a tiny pile of "it must be worked on NOW" and then either filed or trashed. (this idea is part of the earlier one on "this tiny corner" or "this box" must be done before lunch, etc).
Amazing what treasures we find when we do that. We have no boxes now, happy to report :)
Also happy to report - he is finally starting to ask "Can I get rid of this? Can I give this to my cousin?" 
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Topic: Hate cleaning my son's room!
