Beyond Tidy by Annmarie Brogan

Author:Annmarie Brogan
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781631586040
Publisher: Racehorse
Published: 2020-04-14T16:00:00+00:00

It’s amazing how much clutter can annoy you when you are home all day to see it.

So we did what any great friends do—we called each other up and complained. A lot. Then we brainstormed. A lot. It always came back to the idea of giving everything we owned its own home.

No matter what we do or where we go, at some point we come back home. We go grocery shopping, or to work, or to our children’s games and then we come home. We don’t sleep on the corner, ring a stranger’s bell, or just randomly stop driving the car. We come where? Say it with us, friends! Home. And most days, the majority of us don’t get lost.

So, imagine how much easier everyday life would be if you just applied this principle to your stuff. When everything has a home, and gets returned to that home, there’s no guesswork. There’s no time wasted looking for things. You can find what you need when you need it.

Theoretically, there would be no clutter. #canyouimagine?

Running around the house in a last-minute panic looking for something you need to take with you? Not pretty. Losing important documents because there are piles of paper everywhere? Not cool. Spending time and money to replace “lost” items or expired food? Not cheap. Who has all this extra time and money? Not us, for sure. And we certainly don’t have the extra energy!

And guess what? If you are a parent, you can and should apply this principle to your children’s things, even if they’re too young to know what a principle is. If they don’t want to lose their favorite toy, then they should have a specific home for it and return it when they are done using it. If it gets lost, the onus should be on them. Having specific homes for their things will teach them from a young age how to respect and keep track of them. It will assist them with time management. It will serve them well in school and in life. Also, you will avoid meltdowns, and we don’t just mean theirs.

Marie shares a real-life example:

Long before my teenagers started college, they were little pre-schoolers trained by their teachers to put everything away when “mat time” was over. The classroom had an open floor plan, but it was sectioned off for different activities, like drawing/painting, building blocks, playing house, puzzles and games, story time/show & tell, etc. These kids were like well-oiled machines in the classroom; they knew exactly where to find things and where to return them. More than that, they knew it was expected that they should put things back properly when they were done using them. My two were more than happy to be the teacher’s pet and help during clean up time. They felt very proud and competent. It was really quite adorable.

That is, until they got dismissed. When I would get them home, the teachers’ well-oiled machines would morph into bats out of hell—dumping their school bags, artwork, and toys all over the house.

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