May 2025
I can’t personally say I’ve been doing a whole lot of spring cleaning, just tidbits here and there, but it is that season.
The trees and flowers begin to bloom, and we suddenly get an urge to lighten our load and dust off the cobwebs.
I am not a things oriented person by nature. I value ideas, experiences, and simplicity. But I can sometimes hoard because I’m also a pretty conscientious and frugal person, so once I own something, I really want to be sure that I’ve gotten my money’s worth or, if it was a gift, that I stewarded it well. Despite the fact that excess overwhelms me, my home is still filled with plenty of things to contend with, and if you’re like most, yours might be too…especially if you’re a mama.
Beyond our own tendencies to purchase or purge, being a mom comes with a lot of paraphernalia. Our kids accumulate so much, some through curious finds in the park or a neighborhood walk, and some through all the activities (art from school, birthday and class party goody bags, and the list goes on.)
Perhaps you, like me, have had that feeling of just reaching an “I’ve had it point” where you grab a bag and start throwing things in it for the donation pile. Perhaps that point is coming. Kids often have way more than they can play with, and many times, it’s in their best interest to have their parents curate possessions to a modest and manageable amount so that they can have their things organized and tidy for when they want to use them.
Julia Ubbenga has just released a great book on minimalism from a Christian perspective to help us focus on being rich in what matters called Declutter Your Heart and Your Home.
Purging clutter and dead weight from our home is necessary and can be emotionally as well as spatially freeing. But in the frenzy of spring cleaning bolstered by a frustration with excess, it is possible to forget to consider which items may actually mean something later. Just because it’s in the way doesn’t always mean it belongs in the trash or Goodwill pile.
I don’t have masses of items that survived my childhood, but I do have some things I’m grateful my parents didn’t toss. There’s the wooden baby doll cradle my uncle made for me that I now plan to hold onto even after my kids stop using it for grandkids someday.
There’s my Pinky Pinky, the little stuffed rabbit that has been patched multiple times and worn threadbare by snuggles. There is my sticker collection, compiled in a trusty three ring binder, and the locket with my name engraved on the back. There are the American Girl book collections I started saving up money to buy from Sam’s Club in late elementary school and the around the world collection of Barbie dolls that my girls love playing with now.
Yet we can’t save it all, and sometimes things that parents hold onto for years just get tossed by adult children. My mom dutifully saved all my ribbons, trophies, and plaques from years of sports, dance, and music.
Though those experiences were invaluable, and I have sweet memories and some skills from my years pursuing those endeavors, I’ve let all those little knickknacks go. (Except for the pictures, which are fun to look back at.) The spoils of my youth just didn’t seem that important once I inherited the box of accruements.
It can be challenging to decipher what to keep for posterity’s sake and what to toss for the sake of cleanliness and margin. Some kiddos and teens never want to let anything go and others have a great capacity for generosity and seem untethered by worldly possessions.
Jesus told us in no uncertain terms that things should be held loosely:
Something that I try to practice is identifying possessions worth holding on to for the kids according to the value they hold regarding memories and associated people. They have gotten any number of stuffed animals. A few they gravitate toward, suggesting something meaningful. But some are gifts from loved ones, some of whom are no longer with us. Keeping them is a way of honoring the memory of the person who gave the gifts.
Clothes can be especially overwhelming because there is so much that accumulates over the years. I have a special box with the largest size zip lock bag known to man that holds some precious items of clothing and some cedar sticks. I saved some things for each of my children: a newborn outfit, a handmade baby blanket, their dedication and first birthday outfits, and a few other special things that stood out. My kids may or may not appreciate that I saved some baby clothes. I certainly can’t hold on to everything as they age.
There is no perfect formula for what to toss out during spring cleaning or any other purging cycle and what to save.
But going back to what Jesus said in Matthew, the issue is not things in and of themselves but the futility of finding our treasure in things.
Even if I’m not saving items because I overly value them intrinsically, if I can’t let them go because I’m clinging to a life stage our family is moving past, my hope isn’t in the future. It’s attempting to freeze time and maybe a sweet period that just won’t keep.
I’ve given all three of my girls a memory box, and my son will be getting one soon. I’m trying to teach them to start taking some ownership about what they want to hold onto. Not everything can fit in the box and they must learn selectivity, but some things are worth being sentimental about.
One of the best pieces of advice I received as a new mom was from my sister who encouraged me to get a Line a Day memory book to record little moments of the kids’ lives. The book recorded something from each day of their first five years. After that, I switched to a Line a Week book, which I still keep up for all four of them now. Even as I may inevitably throw away the one item they would have wanted me to keep and save all the wrong things, what’s really worth holding onto anyway are the memories.
We can’t hold onto all of these either though. The sound of their little voices fades and the recollections of routines that seemed to last forever become a weakening memory that eludes us. But the pictures we keep and the snippets and stories we write down will jog our memories later, and even if the reminiscences are dim, having lived through the moments shapes us, and them.
To me, this takes off some of the pressure. These lives are too beautiful and complex to possibly document or hold onto them in their entirety.
Our children’s childhoods shouldn’t become museums, even if we could somehow keep most of the artifacts.
So maybe pause thoughtfully before you toss this spring cleaning season, but ultimately, there is freedom in remembering that though things may give clues about life, they don’t comprise a life.
Photo credits:
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/cluttered-children-s-room_1256771_967835″>Stockcake</a>
Photo by <a href=”https://stockcake.com/i/stacked-moving-boxes_2216422_1324541″>Stockcake</a>
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