10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 8 Comments

Want to reduce the flow of stuff into your house? Here are 10 principles to follow to accumulate less stuff (particularly toys) and cut down on clutter.

10 Big Ways Your Family Can Accumulate Less Stuff (Photo: Toy plastic house and wooden walker on the floor)

Looking at the spread of toys and books scattered across our basement floor, I shake my head. “We have way too much stuff,” I think. “And we have birthdays coming up.”

Like many families, we suffer from the disease of Too Much Damn Stuff. While it’s frustrating, I take some hope in the fact that the flow of stuff into our house has slowed substantially in the four years we’ve been parents.

We’ve worked hard to cut down on the amount of toys in particular because having fewer toys can encourage creativity and reduce stress. When presented with four toys or 16 toys, toddlers who could choose from four toys played with individual toys longer and played with them in a larger variety of ways.  Laura at the blog YouShouldGrow has nine more ways that kids benefit when they have fewer toys. For more on the advantages of having fewer toys, be sure to check out the book and website Simplicity Parenting.

From an environmental point of view, producing and shipping all of these things uses natural resources and energy. Not to mention the waste when you need to get rid of them. Of course, buying all that stuff costs money that can be used in other ways!

As I’m (clearly) far from an expert in this realm, I asked my fellow bloggers for their tips on accumulating less stuff as a parent of young children:

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Discovering Spring in the Wintertime of Parenting

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Discovering Spring in the Wintertime of Parenting. (Photo: Adult holding a child with kites in the background against the sky)

A flutter of wings in the dark glided through the sky, just barely within my sight.

“I think that was a bat!” I exclaimed to my four-year-old son as we walked from the car to the house.

Another dark shadow flitted by. Then another.

“The bats are waking up!” he yelled.

Although it was bedtime, I lingered outside with him. As he danced around like a springtime sprite, I sat down on the grass. I stared up at the moon, glowing behind the fog of a cloud. The shadows of deer moved among the gravestones in the cemetery behind our house. My son regaled me with tales of the bats coming out of hibernation and the geese flying back to their homes. The signs of spring. All may not have been right with the world, but there was a little peace in that space, at that time.

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How to Limit Advertising’s Influence on Your Kids

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How to Limit Advertising's Influence on Your Kids (Photo: TV playing a McDonald's advertisement)

“I think they’re trying to sell you beer,” stated my son after a Bud Light commercial during a football game. While I didn’t really need my kid to be watching beer commercials, I was proud of his analytical skills. After all, he understood that commercials are more than just fun little videos.

An average kid above the age of two sees more than 25,000 commercials a year. Although peers influence what toys children want, commercials play a major role in preferences. Ads also reinforce the mindset of needing to buy the latest and greatest “stuff,” regardless of what you already own. As hardly anyone advertises the benefits of playing outside, eating vegetables, and buying simple toys, most of us want to counteract advertisements’ influence.

My kid is inquisitive, so we’ve used his questions as an opportunity to help him become more savvy about advertisements. Here are four steps that can help you teach your kid to be more media-aware:

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When Fear Strikes Your Heart as a Mom

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments


TW: Miscarriage/pregnancy loss; general kid medical problems

Two trips to urgent care and three trips to the emergency room for two different medical issues. All in one week.

As I drove to the ER for the second time, going 25 miles an hour in the freezing rain, REM’s “It’s the End of the World as We Know It” came on. Despite the circumstances, I couldn’t help but laugh. What could be more appropriate?

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And Now We Are Two: Loving My Baby on His Second Birthday

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Loving My Baby on His Second Birthday (Photo: Young white boy in pajamas running out of frame)

“Up Up Up!” my younger son cries, jabbing the air with his finger. I swing him up onto my lap, resting him on my left leg. He continues to clamber up me, holding onto my shoulders. “Up Up!” he says again. I can only say, “Dude, you’re as far up as you can go!”

But that’s his personality – always up, always bigger, always faster. Like his nickname of Little Bird, he’s both tiny and longs to fly.

Even when I was pregnant, he was constantly stretching and kicking, reminding me of his presence. He came into the world in a rush, almost a month early and with a labor so short that I gave birth less than a half-hour after we left the house for the hospital.

And now he’s two.

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Guest Post: Embracing Grace in the Long Nights of Motherhood

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They say the “Days are long but the years are short.” At least for me, the nights of parenting little people are the longest. But even those long nights have beauty in them. I wrote a guest post for Her View from Home about finding that grace for myself and my children through my Christian faith.

Here’s the first paragraph of “Embracing Grace in the Long Nights of Motherhood“:

Sitting on the worn futon in the back of our church, my eyes fluttered as I watched my one-year-old toddle around. While trying to listen to the sermon, I reflected on the rough time we experienced the night before. But when I looked beyond that single night, I saw a love so all-encompassing it carried me through the dark.

Visit Her View from Home to read more!

 

Embracing Grace in the Long Nights of Motherhood. (Photo: A baby lying in a crib, with a head-shot of a white woman with glasses in a purple shirt beneath it)

Reflecting on Our Past through Photographs

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Photo: Framed photograph of a white man and woman walking down stairs in wedding clothes, surrounded by people on both sides

Holding my wedding photo, I look down and see a snapshot of a moment almost 12 years ago. My hair up and my dress poofing out, I’m stepping down the church stairs, holding my husband’s hand. We’re both grinning the grins of those who are young, in love, and finally able to wake up next to the person they adore. On both sides of us, friends and family are blowing bubbles and cheering.

Back in the present day, my four-year-old is sitting next to me on the couch. He points to the person on my right. “Who is that?” he asks. I respond, “That’s my friend Drew and that’s Nana…” as I go through and identify everyone in the photo. No matter how many times I identify these people, my kids still ask. There’s a sense of magic in the ritual. It’s as if I’m evoking that day for them, allowing them to experience something they could never participate in.

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How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 3 Comments

Thinking about starting seeds for your family vegetable garden? Here’s step-by-step instructions on starting seeds and getting your kids involved.

How to Start Seeds for a Garden with Little Kids (Two photos, both of small white children leaning over bowls of dirt with their hands in it)

Watching my kids plunge their hands into a mix of seed starting mix and water on our back deck, I know there’s something simply right about what we’re doing. And messy. Very messy.

But after planning a garden with kids, seed starting is the next logical step. While I could fill my backyard garden with seedlings from the farmers’ market, starting everything from seed is both cheaper and more rewarding. It helps the kids see the full life-cycle of plants, from seed to fruit and back to seed again. It’s also a great way to get them involved before spring shows up.

So every year, I flip through the Southern Exposure Seed Exchange catalog, order too much, and start the process of bringing up seedlings. (If you’re not in the Southeast U.S., Home for the Harvest has a great list of sustainable vegetable seed companies.) While my older son (nicknamed Sprout, appropriately) has helped start seeds the last few years, my younger son started helping this year too.

Here’s what we’ve learned:

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This is Me at 35

/ Shannon Brescher Shea / 2 Comments

The Beauty and Challenge of Turning 35 Years Old (Photo: Cookie cake with a birthday cake candle)

“What’s that?” my almost two-year-old asks, his constant question. He points at a circle of water on the pavement, rippling as droplets of water plunk down from the sky. It’s my 35th birthday and I’m out on a walk with him in the rain. I should be back in the house, cleaning before a party tomorrow. But I’m not. I’m just here with him, gazing at puddles.

“It’s a puddle,” I say. “You can splash in it.”

He tip-toes into the water. Then he stomps into the middle of the puddle, water splashing up onto his petite jeans.

A silver-haired lady walks by, a neighbor I don’t recognize. She says something I have difficulty understanding in an Eastern European accent. I finally catch that she’s asking my son’s age. I answer and she remarks, “She’s a good mom, letting you play in the puddle like that,” to my son.

This is me at 35.

35 is choosing the joy in the rain even if you “should” be doing something else. 35 is wondering what exactly strangers mean by their weird comments and choosing to take them in a positive way. 35 is following where your child and your heart leads.

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