As we move towards a new phase in our household which there are no preschool or primary aged children living here, I have found that suddenly my ongoing decluttering battle has taken a great leap forward for the same amount of effort.
This year our house has started to actually look like I remember "grown-up's houses" looking like when I was a teenager or at university, rather than having things (even tidy, frequently-sorted-and-decluttered things) visible in every room and all cupboards rammed.
The difference has been.....that there are whole categories of item that we are no longer housing!
We no longer have
- baby equipment (cot, highchair, playpen, bouncer, playmat, baby bath, potties, pram etc etc)
- bath toys
- garden toys that live by the back door ready to go in and out (down to one football hung up inside and a couple of beach things in the garage).
- paints and playdough, sand etc in a trolley in the kitchen
- "kitchen science" items
- "kitchen science" plants growing on windowsills - cress, germinating beans, tomato plants, starting off sunflowers for a competition etc
- 'interesting' recycling being saved for "junk modelling" or last-second requests to take a shoebox, plastic bottle and five loo roll middles to Cubs.
- books from several very different reading ages
- large toys that free-stand as they are too big to go away into a cupboard
- a huge bag of outdoor clothing (as if going on a mission to Antarctica in the pouring rain) and wellies on standby in the hall
What other categories of 'stuff' do you no longer have to-hand in your living space now that your children are older (or have even partially left home)?