Less Is More

I am reporting from the front lines of The Great Birmingham Toy Purge. 

Last Thursday, I boxed, bagged, or chucked every single toy in our house, put them all in a closet,  locked it, and hid the key.

Leading up to this dramatic event, every remote corner and crevice of my house was examined for renegade Lego's and army men.  Every underwear drawer was searched for contraband K-nex.  I have personally looked under every rug, dresser, bed, and chair, and am now quite satisfied that the job is done. 

The toys are gone. 

Well, not GONE gone.  But they are inaccessible to all interested parties.

My initial announcement for this project was met with amused disbelief.  I could almost hear the inner chuckling.  

"That quirky, crazy Mom of ours!  I just love her idle threats and proclamations.  Look how earnest she looks!  She even bought boxes...now let's go wear her down."

Then came silent amazement as they sat in the entrance to the playroom and watched me sorting and sealing like a mad woman.

Before I locked up the toy tomb, I allowed each child to choose ONE play item and two matchbox cars from inside it's depths.  Jude chose a box of wooden blocks.  The older boys chose a trivia quiz game and a spelling game.  Kaiden chose a Little People house.  Keira chose a small basket of baby dolls.

Then I barred the door, and braced myself for the barrage of carping, whining, lamenting, and complaining. 

Which, for the most part, has not come! 

For a whole week, we have had five children playing with fewer toys than I owned before I even had kids.  Contentedly!  

I am seeing sustained play, concentration, teamwork, imagination, creativity (who knew you could assemble a spy agency, complete with cell phones, coffee mugs, lap tops, machine guns and bullet-proof file folders, out of nothing more than wooden blocks and construction paper?)

Any flashes of discontent are met with a reminder of why we are doing this...

...namely because my friend Sarah (http://www.jskkjmch.blogspot.com/) put the idea in my head! (I told the kids that if they want to complain, they can call her up:) 

Here are the blog posts she shared with me to get me thinking--http://joannagoddard.blogspot.com/2012/05/motherhood-mondays-simplicity-parenting.html 

http://www.livingwellspendingless.com/2012/09/14/why-i-took-all-my-kids-toys-away-why-they-wont-get-them-back/ 

Actually, my children have responded quite well to the REAL rationale for this radical notion.  It all goes back to the obvious fact that excess does not breed contentment.  

Too many options, rather than filling a void, actually create a hunger that did not previously exist.

I am surprised, having just read The Shallows, that I did not connect the dots for myself.  In that excellent book, the author points out that the virtually endless supply and variety of information available on the internet has changed the way we read and think--to the point that is has even physically altered the way our brains function!

Web browsing has all but destroyed our ability to concentrate on one idea for a long period of time--to follow a train of thought to its logical (and often lengthy) conclusion.  

It has created an inner itch for change and movement, even if the information we are consuming is highly interesting to us--as if we are frantically looking around for something different and better to eat while our cheeks are still crammed full of our last mouthful and our fists are clutching our next two bites.

Contemplation?  Meditation?  Too time consuming!  And what if I miss something even MORE exciting that is happening two clicks away?  I'd better be off!

The author writes, " Even when I’m not working [on the computer], I’m as likely as not to be foraging in the web data thickets – reading and writing e-mails, scanning headlines and blog posts, following Facebook updates, watching video streams, downloading music, or just tripping lightly from link to link to link.(PAGE 6) ...What the Net seems to be doing is chipping away my capacity for concentration and contemplation. Whether I’m online or not, my mind now expects to take in information the way the Net distributes it.PAGE 7" 

Well, I saw that my children were playing like that.  They would flit from Lego's to animals, to checkers, to trains, to dress-up in the space of half an hour, destroying the house, and never really playing with anything.   

No matter the toy, it was always "dump and run", and I was spending a third of my day saying, "Put that away before you get anything else out."    

I wondered why I never saw them playing house for two hours, or making up intricate story lines with Playmobil or soldiers like I used to do as a child, but I didn't connect the dots. 

Until now.  

You see, I had relatively few toys in my childhood, and thus I developed appreciation for them and attachment to them, and out of that came the ability to enjoy them more fully.   Hence, my memories of spending entire afternoons happily engaged in one activity.

But I have more children than my parents did, and all of them individually have more toys than I did.  So, like the proverbial kids in the candy store, they have felt compelled to go around taking one bite out of everything instead of savoring one or two special treats.  

Too much Veruca Salt, and not enough Charlie around here!  We needed a change.

Yes, we are only a week into this experiment, but I am already encouraged by the spirit I see, and so we will try this out through the end of March.  

Then I plan to open up the closet--but only so the children can exchange one toy for another.  The toy avalanche will remain contained until further notice. 

And next up?  Books!  

Yes, my children!  No more flip and rip!  One shelf at a time, we will learn to LOVE our books, not line the closets with them.   

We will linger over the pages instead of littering the floors with them. 

Already I am thinking of applications in my own life.  Clothes?  Entertainment?  Food?  How about a deeper appreciation for my pile of Bibles and devotionals?

I wish I could duplicate the effect of scarcity without the pain.  Is that possible?  Hmmm.

Maybe for stronger people.

But in my life God has used the stripping of peace and pleasure and possessions to reveal layers of deep beauty that I never would have noticed.  

How could I be so giddy over a morning with no headache if I did not have frequent migraines?  

Would I be so excited to have a quiet evening with Jamey if he was home all the time?  

Would a peaceful run through the woods or a quiet time of tea seem like such a treat if I didn't have to plan it and protect it?

Could I be brought to tears over the gentle spirit I have seen in my older children if I had not gone through several years of seeing what a soul of anger and anguish looks like in a younger one?  

How much deeper is our appreciation of family now that we have lost some of our dear ones?

In the end, I hope my children come to understand that this whole exercise was not a plot to make my life easier, but rather an attempt to make theirs richer.  

So far, simple seems peaceful, less really does seem like more, and  scarcity appears to have the charming side-effect of breeding appreciation in all of us.  

I'll keep you posted;)