Every 6 months, we practice the principle of the"Six Month Purge". We've become quite adept at doing this purge now, so much so that my son initiated the purge on his room himself. He felt like too much stuff had cluttered into his room and he wanted to clear it out so he can relax easier. Good idea!
I do feel that this signifies that he is transitioning to Scholar Phase more. He got rid of lots of things that he made or acquired during Love of Learning. He kept some mementos, but let go of lots of more childish things. I encouraged him to keep a few things he made, but put it in storage rather than all over his room. Each child has a couple of small boxes of personal keepsakes.
Here are the "Before" and "After" photos of his room:
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| The clutter kept the door from opening all the way. You can't see it, but there is a huge pile of clothes in one corner and the closet is piled with stuff. |
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| Nice, neat closet. Wow! |
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| Ahhh! Room to relax. |
What is the Six Month Purge?
Basically, every 6 months you go through your belongings and decide...
- What to Keep
- What to Donate
- What to Throw Away
Sometimes, especially the first few times you do this purge, you may not have much in the throw away or donate pile. You may feel, as I did at first, that we need to keep everything! Everything has value to someone. I learned that stuff requires upkeep. "Stuff" requires energy to clean it. "Stuff" requires space to store it. "Stuff" requires mental and physical work in order to keep it organized.
This can be very overwhelming. I started with just one area, not even a full room, when I first started. Now, we've been doing this for about 5 years now and I can't tell you how wonderful it is! There are two areas that I still need to work on keeping uncluttered...my filing cabinets (inside and on top) and my kitchen. My kitchen counters just seem to accumulate everyone's things. Ugh!
Always a work in progress....but SO happy to see us progress!
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