The clutter in my life

I love my kids. I love reading. I hate the clutter that comes with both. 

We have a bookcase in our living room that was once beautifully curated with a mix of brown and green decor: wood carvings handmade by my dad, artfully placed green vases, plants, a bowl of potpourri. It’s a focal point between our living room and dining room that brings me peace and calm whenever I look at its geometric block shelves perfectly filled with just the right amount of stuff.

At least it used to be.

Now the bookcase is overrun by things that aren’t so beautifully curated: my daughter’s toys. It started with just the bottom shelf, which didn’t have any decor, so it seemed a useful place to store baby rattles and board books. But, like a weed, the toys slowly overtook each subsequent shelf over time.

Yep… that’s a lot of unorganized toys

Everything grew like weeds – my daughter and her toy collection – so we moved the hand carvings and vases up to higher shelves to keep them out of harm's way from little hands. Now my daughter’s toys take up the entire bottom half of this bookcase and then some. My daughter loves it. I don’t.

My bedroom has a similar problem.

Every night my son and I enjoy reading books together in my room. He brings in what he wants to read and we dive in. And every night the piles of books in my room grow as we continue to read and forget to put them back where they came from. Books are everywhere: on my bedside table, on the electric fireplace, on the dresser. 

My bedroom turned into an unintended bookcase. 

This is actually the book piles on a better day

Both the books and the toys slowly clutter into spaces they don’t belong. We have a bookcase for toys storage and a bedroom for a bookcase. Maybe we just need another bookcase.

But another bookcase wouldn’t fix anything because this clutter is more than clutter. It’s a physical representation of the space my kids take up in my life. It’s also a physical representation of time: of how my kids spend their time reading and playing, of how I spend my time endlessly cleaning up the clutter, and of this time in our lives where my kids are around.

Maybe one day I’ll get better at organizing their clutter. Maybe one day I’ll actually declutter. Maybe one day… but not tonight because I’ll be busy playing with my daughter and her toys and reading my son books.

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Thanks to

Hesam Panahi

,

Emma Dorge

, and

Karena

for creating the space and time to give feedback on this.