YO MAMA: A toddler’s guide to tidying up
I started reading celebrity organizer Marie Kondo’s book “The Life-Changing Magic of Tidying Up” right around the time my toddler son started sticking random objects down the bathroom sink.
He called it a “sink pocket.” Naturally. Where better to keep your valuables?
There were many other kinds of “pockets” around the house. For a little while, I kept finding LEGO men in my cookie tins and toy cars in the refrigerator.
It was like he had a need to fill every available space, no matter how small. I, meanwhile, had a deep desire to de-clutter. I sought minimalism and order; he sought a revolutionary new way of arranging the bookshelf. Our cleaning up styles were clashing like the living room/play area decor.
So could the refined and meticulously organized Marie Kondo offer some words of wisdom? Would her method even be compatible with the discombobulated realm of two working parents and their toddler son? I hoped so.
I wasn’t seeking perfection, simply an organizational strategy that would put things in order and free me up to do other, more fun, things. I liked having a tidy house, but I despised cleaning. It always seemed that precisely three minutes after I put everything away, vacuumed and mopped, a basket of Lego would get dumped out on the floor shattering my zen.
So I pried my eyelids open in the evenings after my son had gone to sleep and — much to my husband’s mocking delight — read about cleaning.
The first step, according to Marie, is to imagine your ideal life. My first thought was: my ideal life is one where I never have to clean again. But I had already read Marie’s other mantra: “Tidy a little a day, and you’ll be tidying forever.” There was no way around it.
So I closed my eyes and imagined my ideal life. I saw myself jumping on the bed with my son and husband (no pile of laundry waiting to be folded in the corner). I saw us playing with blocks in the living room (JUST blocks, no random fake foods or broken toy cars in the mix). I saw us running around in goofy dress-up clothes (no tripping hazards on the floor!).
Visualizing the dream was the easy part. Next, Marie wanted me to gather up all the clothing in the house and put them in a gigantic pile. I would hold each item and see if it “sparked joy.” If it didn’t, I would discard it. Then I would systematically do the same with every other category of “stuff” in my home. It sounded horrible. But I was feeling brave. In the wee hours of morning before my son awoke, I emptied my closet and dressers and threw everything on the bed. I’ll admit, it was a bit disgusting to look at.
I picked up the first item and held it in my hands. I closed my eyes and waited to see if I felt joy or not…
“MAMA COME!”
Oh yeah. The child. He was awake, calling me through the monitor.
The pile would have to wait. Just another half-finished task in a long line-up of uncompleted tasks these days.
Later, I brought him upstairs with me along with some LEGO blocks thinking he might play by himself for a bit while I attempted to sort through and discard my clothing.
We ended up jumping and playing in Junk Mountain for nearly an hour. We played dress up and pretended to be ghosts under floral-print scarves. I didn’t get much discarding done but I did find a whole lot of joy.
Much later that night, after he had gone to sleep, my husband lay in bed in a corner of the mattress that he had excavated from Junk Mountain while I tried to finish going through everything. I was feeling zapped so I took a break to Google Marie Kondo and scroll through her perfect pastel coloured closets. She made it look so easy.
And then I saw the headline: Marie Kondo has 'kind of given up' on tidying up after having three kids.
SHE WHAT?!
I was flabbergasted. If Marie couldn’t find the time to keep a tidy house, why the hell was I trying?
The article went on to say that Kondo was working on a new book that explored the Japanese concept of kurashi, which translates to 'the ideal way of spending our time.' Since becoming a mother, she realized that having a tidy house wasn’t her top priority anymore. Now that was relatable.
I never finished reading “The Life-Changing Magic Of Tidying Up.” But the process did make me reflect on my “ideal life” and what is really important to me in this busy stage of my life: spending time with my family.
For now, I’ll embrace the quirkiness of my home: the toy tractor adorning the centre of my dining table, dinosaurs in the bed, scattered toddler shoes and countless broken crayons. It’s not neat and tidy, but it’s definitely more memorable than a freshly mopped floor.
Below, just for fun, is my toddler’s guide to tidying up.
A Toddler’s Guide to Tidying Up
Step 1: Dump everything out on the floor.
Step 2: Fill all available cushion crevices with small blocks and tiny fake foods.
Step 3: Pull all the bedding onto the floor and arrange in a giant pile.
Step 4: Search and destroy all piles of neatly folded laundry.
Step 5: “Help” with putting away the dishes in all kinds of interesting places.
Step 6: “Help” some more by placing dirty dishes into half-emptied clean load. Eat piece of old food found in dishwasher.
Step 7: Empty out all the dresser drawers and use them as a ladder to climb to the top.
Step 8: Display random toys on freshly cleared off kitchen island.
Step 9: Discard lone socks and mittens throughout house.
Step 10: Get every pillow in the house and use it as a crash pad while jumping off the couch.
— Charlotte Helston gave birth to her first child, a rambunctious little boy, in the spring of 2021. Yo Mama is her weekly reflection on the wild, exhilarating, beautiful, messy, awe-inspiring journey of parenthood.
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