Tuesday, December 28, 2010

New Years Resolutions: Simplifying Life

     Well, Christmas has come and gone, and things are slowly returning to normal.  We restarted school on Monday, and today the snow started to melt.  What a white Christmas we had this year!  (Over a foot!)  It forced us into a slower pace and gave me lots of time to reflect upon my New Years resolution.  January 2008 my New Years resolution was "get pregnant"; and due to getting more than I bargained for, last year it was "survive". This year it's "simplify".  I actually started towards this when the twins were about six months old, when suddenly all this extra stuff we had laying around started really getting to me.  Something about feeling so harried and pulled in a million different directions made any clutter unbearable.  So I started packing up decorations, and seriously rethinking my relationship to "stuff".   I've never been a pack-rat, but I'm not exactly a minimalist either. I like stuff; pretty things, kitchen gadgets, craft materials, etc, but suddenly here I am going through the house thinking, what can I get rid of, what can I put in storage, what can I just get out of here?! 
     So this year, in regards to my house, the focus is going to be getting things pared down to a manageable level, starting with the kids rooms.  My husband thinks I am a wee bit nutty for even wanting to do this, but he goes along with my nutty schemes pretty well. 
     Currently, there are two kid bedrooms- Anna has one and the twins share another.  In a couple of weeks this will not be the case.  They will all share one for sleeping, and the other for playing.  There are several reasons for doing this. 
One: Anna does not want to sleep by herself.  She has never shared a room with anyone, or slept in my husband and my room, and until the twins were born, this has never been a problem.  Now she realizes she is the only person who sleeps alone, and she doesn't like it.
Two: I like the idea of having a "nursery".  A communal room for all the children of the house, until adolescents.  This seems more natural for me than having all the children parceled out onto their separate rooms.
Three: Our current system isn't working.  Anna keeps her bedroom door closed all the time in order to keep the twins out, and the result is that her room is basically unused because she doesn't want the twins in her room but doesn't want to play alone.  The reason she doesn't want the twins in her room, is because she has too many toys everywhere, and they just love to go through and do a ten second blitz. Which brings me to the biggest reason.
Four:  Moving the rooms around will give me the opportunity to pare down all of the kids toys to a manageable number.  I sound so mean, don't I?  It's right after Christmas and I'm talking about getting rid of their toys.  However, I really think that this will help them to enjoy playing with each other more.  Anna doesn't play with two thirds of her toys anyways, and she hates cleaning up, so I am really hoping that this will leave just the toys that are played with, without having to continually pick up the toys the twins just broadcast about for good measure.
     And this is just the first step!  Many more simplifying measures are going to be happening this year.  Now, if I can only think of a way to convince Dave that we really don't need the TV.  Hmmm... Any ideas?

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