Spring Cleaning, Spring Mess, Trashbag Energy

My house is too full.

I know I'm supposed to lean into minimalism to help clear the clutter in mind and space or whatever but I very much don't want to minimize the number of people in this house and people seem to come with stuff and there is stuff everywhere.

Did you know British houses generally don't have closets? The house we live in is 1950s and it has no closets.  We built one "built in" into the twins room but otherwise... everything is in the room.  No doors to hide anything.

I dream of a closet.

When we went to France both Ezra and Lily fell out of their beds almost every night.  I asked why and Ezra noted that his bed has sides.  I sort of forgot, but he has been sleeping on one of these toddler beds (although it is fully extended)

So we went on Gumtree and bought a twin bed for his room with no sides because it is a normal bed.  It's also 10cm wider and now we are moving around the rest of his room.  So it looks like this at present

(Well, the bed is now made, and the hoover gone, but still... it's chaos)

And then outside his room looks like this

On, and there is now a disassembled toddler bed in my office.

As he went through his toys on which to keep and which to maybe put in the one closet or give to the twins he decided the keep pile was EVERYTHING. 

"but what about this puzzle for ages 3+? I think Aubrey might like it" I suggested.

"No" he said "Aubrey is only 2 and I like it"

So... stuff.  There is so much stuff.

Yesterday I put away (I almost wrote "folded" but I don't fold laundry until it goes in a drawer) 5 loads of laundry.  I know this is because I have slowly accumulated enough clothes for everyone that we can actually get to 5 loads... but it was so much laundry.

I know this is natural within the spring clean cycle and whatnot, but I have the urge to get rid of everything and start over.  I am also a classic over-declutterer.  I still have young kids and still need things. I have gotten rid of too much before.

I was listening to some cleaning based podcasts and they often start with "remove trash from your space" and I always think "I don't have trash in my space and the podcast person (Dana K White) said "Everyone has trash" and I realized I do.  I live in a trash space but I could literally spend every minute of every day sorting every room and by the end whatever room. started on would be chaos again.

That's my house complaint.   I feel like the Sisyphus of Stuff while everything else (ie personal sports, hobbies, people, interests) get neglected in favour of stuff management. 

I also realize that "stuff management" doesn't preclude "personal hobbies" but weirdly the time it would take to keep stuff managed is the exact same time it would take to enjoy my own hopies (I am guessing an hour a day?) and so it does feel like I can only pick one.  

It doesn't help that two year olds are not tidy.  Neither are 7 year olds.  The 5 year old is a star.  One of the twins actually loves going through the literal trash and we sometimes call her a trash panda because of this proclivity. 

Thanks for listening to my stuff rant.