The gift of wizardry

In JK Rowling's world, some people are wizards.

Where do wizard children come from?

You are very likely to be a wizard if you have a wizard parent or especially two. If so, your siblings are probably wizards too. If they aren't, this can cause family friction.

Sometimes young wizard children are born to nonwizard parents, which is sometimes welcome and sometimes awkward when this is discovered. You have to recognise when a child is a wizard, or everything will get pretty confused.

Raising a wizard

Wizards may have a variety of unusual skills - some will be really helpful in everyday life and some will be a real burden or even a danger until the skill is really well understood by the wizard child, usually with the help of family or another great teacher. Wizards can be expensive to educate, with special equipment, methods, and expertly trained teachers. Some families will not be able to afford as much special attention as their wizard child needs.

But each wizard individual has different strengths and weaknesses, and sometimes the weaknesses are more obvious than the strengths. No wizard is good at everything, although some may drive themselves crazy trying.

Wizard life

Wizards usually have to hide what they can do from nonwizards, because their capabilities can be confusing or frightening. It can be easier for wizards to spend most of their time with other wizards, so they can be comfortable and talk freely without being rejected or judged as weird.

But wizards, even with their flashy tricks and magic words, know that they are not superior to nonwizards - who also have their own strengths that most wizards struggle to master. The wizards who do believe they are superior can be very hard to like and live with.

Some wizards never get the hang of their powers and their role in the world, and they die before their time.

And now for the magic trick

Now go replace every instance of "wizard" above with "gifted."

There are a lot of parallels with this exciting fantasy fiction, which lets anyone imagine a special role. Unfortunately for the gifted, it gets even more complicated after that. In real life, we don't have an easily-identified evil enemy to band together and fight, so we're just as likely to fight with each other when we get stressed.

Our goals aren't well-defined, and there's no fanfare or explosion when we succeed or fail. There is no Ministry for the Gifted, with rules and regulations to guide our behaviour.

And it is generally recommended that the gifted try their best to integrate most of the time, so saddest of all, there is no Hogwarts for the gifted. At least not in my neighbourhood - if there's one in yours, please tell me in the comments. And where to catch the train. Because I'm not ready to give up on the magic just yet.

This post has been written for the 2014 Gifted Awareness Week Blog tour. See all the blogs as they magically appear...

Jessica Parsons is the current president of Auckland Explorers, branch of the NZ Association for Gifted Children. She has two gifted children with her gifted husband.

Normal Vegans? Are you for real?

Voracious readers and voracious vegans, we have a real problem. Most books aren't written by vegans.

So most stories will, without any warning, launch into lingering descriptions of animal-based meals.

Food in Fiction

Revisiting childhood favourites like the Narnia adventures or Little House on the Prairie can be especially jarring for me. Vegetarians or the health-conscious are usually relegated to being the weirdo minor character, a target for the main characters' mainstream contempt. Remember Eustace and family in Narnia?

It's a rare treat to find even one sympathic vegetarian character in a book (eg, the tough FBI agent Dillon Savich in Catherine Coulter's romantic thrillers).

(Hey. I bet I'm not the only one reading escapist fiction as counterbalance to heavy activism.)

What a thrill to read Sweetheart Deal and meet lead character Lilly, who is a vegetarian so health-aware that she travels with boxes of organic trail mix bars for emergencies. This is a semi-autobiographical character for the author, Claire Matturro, and I'm sure rings a bell for many of us too.

Stereotyping is alive and well

However, we soon discover that lawyer Lilly is not only a vegetarian health foodie but also certifiably neurotic. She's obsessive-compulsive about germs and dirt and fears flying. She is constantly finding similarities between herself and her dysfunctional mother.

So we've advanced from odd vegetarian bit players to a strong, sympathetic, but still very odd vegetarian heroine. "Disappointing and unfair!" I thought. Boo! Booooo!

Or... is it?

Truth Stranger than Fiction?

I'm not normal. I'll happily stand up for my many abnormal choices. And I'm struggling to think of any vegans I know whose only quirk is in their diet. Thinking...thinking...

Instead, the vegans I know would agree with this: 

It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society. (Krishnamurti)

Does a vegan consciousness go naturally hand-in-hand with other social misfittings? 

Stand up and be counted...

Anyone out there want to raise their hands as vegans who are basically normal in all other ways?

Also, please share any cool fiction about vegans. I've almost finished my book.

Freedom - in living colour

I don't always get a gasp of astonishment from my husband when he gets home. (Maybe I could, but that would be promising more than I can deliver.)  But I did yesterday.

I just covered the freedom of giving.  With no more specific goal in mind than decluttering, I'm proud to report transforming another space from a Before to an After.  More Before Pictures...

Original guest bedroom, 2010

We got rid of a table from my student days, emptied junk off a great office desk and moved it in.  The bookshelves went behind the couch - but we could still reach them, sort of.

Reshuffled guest bedroom

Slowly and surely, items found better homes. The office desk went into our new office.  I released books and the little bookshelf holds kids' books in the kids' room.  A chair is now my reading sanctuary in our bedroom, and another small shelf is holding up a family dollhouse.

I looked over (from my standing desk) one day and saw what could happen if I cleaned up some stray small clutter.

And now for the happy ending...

 Not only can we reach our books again, we can sit down and read them too.


"Why didn't we do this before?" asked DH. Honey, now you know.

And I post these photo histories to show you that if I can do this with the stuff we had, anyone can.

Where are your histories waiting to happen?

Secondhand smarts - bagging it

Don't miss the previous entries in the Secondhand Smarts series...

Ever since I found a designer OiOi nappy backpack at my local charity shop (bought for $2, sold for $50), I always take a few minutes to check out the handbag section for other unappreciated goodies.

I'm a backpack fan rather than a handbag fanatic, as carrying gear on my back with two hands still free is about the best plan around.

My current backpack is from Kathmandu - it's as fashionable as a rockclimbing harness and almost as grubby.  Of course, it can carry at least 7 library books (hardback!) or an emergency lot of groceries.  But Cinderella would never take it to the ball.




But now I have a new handsfree device:

For a mere $7, I've plucked an elegant rose with a suggestively fashionable label to strap on when I expect a more civilised and less juvenile outing.

Is it really Nina Ricci?  For $7, who cares?

Anyway, it's the branding that keeps this from being the ultimate minimalist backpack.

I wore this on my adventure, miniMum in ConsumerLand.  Details coming soon...

Dressing up for success

 Remember the drawers from the Great Book Dump?
















 

Contained, just!

 In that same bedroom, we also have the Great Dress Up Clothes Dump.

While this hamper does allow for tidying away dress up clothes, access and retrieval is a serious problem.  Generally solved by dumping the entire hamper onto the floor.  Or sadly, ignoring the dress up clothes entirely.













But the solution is at hand.

The ex-book dump drawers - the small middle drawer holds accessories!

While I still dream about multiple hooks on the walls for easy selection of fun costumes, this is a giant leap forward.  And best of all, now you see it...

And now you don't!

Home improvement - easy and cheap.

Decluttering Books!

I love to report decluttering success and this is a biggie - one of my "after" shots (from before) is now a "before"!

Really, this is already pretty good.

But as mentioned in before post, books are a continual clutter problem for us.  The rest of our kids' books are piled in gleaned drawers under the bed.  And we have too many.  We are very lucky to get so many great books, and the great book dump is no longer working.  So, out they come...

The drawers, small shelf, plus books to be released!

And, thanks to my own personal book decluttering and DH's handiness with his toolbox, here is a bookshelf reclaimed for the kids:

Not too big, not too small...just right!

Back to basics - decluttering!

I feel much happier when I have a decluttering project on the go.  Will I end up in a house full only of echoes from empty rooms?  I can only imagine!

With storage - less is more!
Aha - an awful clutter corner in my boy's room.  Here's the before shot. (Look in the centre, between bunks)

It's an awkward narrow space between the end of the bunkbed and the wall.  I'd made it even worse with tall set of 5 coloured baskets and a small wooden bookshelf with the reading lamp.

The baskets held mostly clutter, dust, and some book overflow.  Did I mention we have too many books?  Baskets seem to be clutter magnets and they are hard to find things in!  

We need storage for stuff, but storage can also encourage clutter - you spread items around more, toss things in when you are short of time, and the storage itself is taking up space.

I knew this was the problem here - bye bye baskets!

More flattering angle, but the baskets are gone...

It wasn't quite as simple as that but it was astonishing how few keepers were taking up so much space.

Those books are some of their favourites (Dr. Seuss and Lynley Dodd) and now anybody, no matter how short, can get one.

As so often happens, it looks better now and will keep on looking better because I can keep it clean!  I can get into the corner, vacuum, reach under that end of the bed - sweet success.







Very glad to be back in the decluttering saddle...hmmm, what next?

Top 10 tips to tidy your toyroom

Once you have the knack of decluttering your grownup knickknacks and do-nothings, you might be ready to tackle a much thornier problem - Kid Stuff!

Why is Kid Stuff harder?
The essence of decluttering is "Do I need this?"  Adults usually have a few main interests and activities - we have learned we must focus on only a few for any level of quality.  So the essential question can be answered with a minimum of struggle.  Even the followup question "Will I need this later?" can, with some honesty, be handled.

Kids are butterfly beings with different interests each day so... "does she need this - will he need this later?"  How do you know? 

Inspired by a lovely Montessori handbook,  I have redesigned our home toy areas.  Here's what I've learned:

Decluttering

1.  Declutter first

Only store and organise what you want to keep!

Your kids will gain as much from the improvement as you do.

2.  Art is in the making

Be brutal with kids' paintings and crafts - at preschool and early school they might make something each day.  Do the math.  How many boxes of crumpled coloured paper and scattered glitter do you really want in your house?

If it doesn't make you say "Wow!" and rush off to show your partner or grandma, it's not this year's keeper.

3.  Dig deep!  

Toys which have been buried and haven't been played with for some time are the best candidates for someone else to love.  It is tempting to bring them out as a new surprise for your children, but beware!  Unless you can get rid of familiar toys instead, you won't end up decluttering anything.

Remember that they have too many toys and that's why you are here.  You don't have to do anything heartwrenching, but don't fall into the "this is sorta neat, maybe they'd like this again" mediocrity trap. 

4. There can be only one... 

You may find (like me) that you've bought several versions of a toy at different times, because you liked it just as much each time you saw it.  Full marks for consistency - now let's work on improving the clutter.

I'm a sucker for letter and number teaching games and there are so many cool ones!  But perhaps my kids don't need a Bob the Builder spelling game and Pooh Bear dominoes and an ABC puzzle and fridge magnets to learn the alphabet?

5. No one-trick ponies

The secret to having fewer toys is keeping only the toys that are full of surprises to stir your child's imagination.  Some toys look great but really only do one thing. 

• One pull-along toy grabbed my son's attention and he even bought it with his own pocket money.  But even though this cute Elmo-head opened up to show Cookie Monster when pulled, that's all it did. Pull, roll, open, and giggle maniacally.  Its string was so short that a child tall enough to pull it would generally pull it off the ground.
• A building set we were given that makes only a dog or a duck has limited entertainment value - the frustration of putting it together wrong generally outweighs the satisfaction of building a dog one more time
• Current Lego fashion for sets with special pieces that build only one thing get a big thumbs down - we have a giant jumbled set of mostly basic blocks and I'm amazed at what gets built.  Again, I like toys where doing it differently doesn't mean doing it wrong.

Do yourself a favour and find one-trick ponies another stable...and think hard when bringing new toys into yours.
 
6.  Be careful giving away your kids' stuff!  

I judge what stuff my kids don't love anymore.  If I gave them refusal rights, they might develop a new attachment. So far, I haven't been bitten.  But just last week, my niece claimed a handed down book (now Nadia's favourite) as one of her favourites still! (This is the first time - both my nieces are very generous with passing on their things to us.)  Oh, the dilemma!  Oh the agony!  Oh, the irony, for my sister has yet to forgive our mother for donating her soft toys without asking her...

But we've got at least a 99.99% success rate.  And when my little baby darling girl wasn't looking at the book, I slipped it into my sister's little baby darling girl's schoolbag and luckily, I haven't heard anything about it at all.  Because if there's one other thing we have too many of, it's books!  I know this will strike a chord with many of you, and I'd love to hear what you do when you have so many great kids books that your shelves runneth over.

Storage  
Now you're ready to put your remaining beloved educational and entertainment gems away. 

7.  Take professional advice

Dr Maria Montessori designed a revolutionary and successful teaching method that is still being used today.  Originally, their special handmade learning toys were dispensed by the teachers from locked cupboards.  But the children showed they would treat their playthings with respect.

Today's model allows children free access (many early education centres also use this model):

• Open low shelves
• Baskets or boxes to contain parts of toys
• Last toy put away before next toy out (very important, but we are still working on this habit for home use)

I have seen this design in so many centres, but I had to see it described in a book to act on it.

I had two stacking basket sets where the shelves are now, and they ended up as stacked jumble piles that the kids rarely dug into for toys.

That big basket on the top shelf will become another junk basket if I don't dedicate it to a purpose.

8. Easy access
A good play area must be easy to put things into and get things out of.  Otherwise, anything stored there will turn into a junk pile. Remember that good things might as well be junk if you can't find them. It's much easier to throw something down and under than to pick it up and out.

It took so long to clear out underneath our small school desk in the corner that it was an obvious lesson - nothing more is going to be stored there.

9.  The storage must fit the the stored

Small toys in a deep container might as well be in a black hole, or expect the whole lot to be on the floor for searching.  As a rule, toys shouldn't be piled more than three layers deep in a container...excluding building sets like Lego, of course.  Luckly, shallow containers are more likely to fit under furniture for storage.

We have a few big containers (probably verging on too big)

• Bucket for bats and paddles and spades
• Hamper for balls and balloons (my kids like blowing up balloons just for the sake of it)
• Tall basket and a wall mounted hammock for large soft toys

I do my best to keep small toys out of these black holes.

10.  Rotating toys

You may have great toys that you and the kids can't part with but still can't fit into your professionally-inspired uncluttered easy access play area either.

If you have the room elsewhere, box those winners up and bring them out in a few months (and choose current toys to live in the box).  Rotation time is a great time for another round of decluttering!

When boxing up:

• choose toys with some lifespan left - if your child will be too old for that toy by next rotation, that's one to leave available for play
• store with care - you don't want rotation time to be jumble cleanup time

Must try harder
You can see from my pictures that we are still a work in progress.

Seriously, I am donating in fruit bags when I have so much stuff I ought to be donating in rubbish bags.  Has anyone tried the clean sweep method with toys and other kid stuff?

Other takes on tidy toyrooms:

• Toy Crazy
• Taming the Toy room
• Organising tips

Have I missed out your favourite tidy tip?  Share it!

I found the BEFORE pictures!

Just like on the infomercial, I'm really excited about this!  Because some of my biggest work happened in our downstairs area before I started on this blog and now I get to show it off...

If it can be called showing off to display how horrendous things were before.  

• Believe it or not, I took these pictures to show this area to an organiser for student host families.  Do I blame her for refusing us?  Why was she even polite?  In my defense, had anything come of it, I would have made exactly these improvements.  The real hangup was the lack of a wall and door enclosure to the bed area.  If anyone knows an easy way to ventilate a room surrounded by concrete wall and ground, post now!

All right (deep breath).  Here we go.

That's not too horrible, for a downstairs area...after all, we have had guests here on a regular basis.

And in fact, the after shot isn't a huge improvement.  Lots has changed but it's not much less crowded.  Gotta love the new mirror - bargain ex-dresser mirror from our local charity shop and installed by handy dandy DH!  And the actual working desk area.


















So, in our before shot across from that futon bed.....things are getting worse!







Well, you have to tidy extra furniture somewhere...right?  Right?  Of course you do.


And now?  This is so great...we discovered there was a wall back there.  To help convince you this really is the same space, on the far left of both, you can see the edge of our large food storage pantry.  That sucker ain't movin'!

















The dresser behind SuperTorchMan there and the hamper on top are empty!  And the tall brown cupboard is now completely hidden behind the big pantry when you walk into the room - same storage area, less visual clutter.

Now, for Super Uber before picture of the rest of the downstairs area (ooooh, I can't look, it's too scary)!

Did I say the downstairs area?  Sorry, I meant the disaster area.  I'm so glad I have an after shot coming... 

What a difference! It's like day and night!  OK, it is day and night, but that's not important right now.  We have rediscovered the floor...and walls...and bits that restore the roomy quality of the room, while losing that je ne sais quoi, junk pile decor we had going before. 

Of course, I got rid of loads of stuff during this transformation.  but I also did some thinking.  We had cleared the space for the desk (invisibly holding up towers of boxes in disaster shot) to go across from the bed and be a desk. Then I clicked:  perhaps it's not the best feng shui to build my Great Wall of Boxes or even the new Lesser Wall of Boxes in direct line of sight of the door to this room...which is also the first room on view when visitors enter the lobby of our house.  I couldn't hurry them up the stairs before they saw our shame.

Now Wall of Boxes is invisible unless you step into the room - which most visitors won't.  They do see the kiddy art tables in artful disarray most of the time, but at least that's now against the wall instead of halfway across the floor.

The amazing thing is, I didn't really think we had a major problem before I started on it.  Even though it wasn't really out of sight, I had put it out of my mind because we have a sizeable house and this isn't our living space.  But the feeling of accomplishment?  Priceless...

What about you - any hidey holes in your sanctum of peace that you're pretending don't exist?

Only keep what you use and love

1. Even if I like something, I can still get rid of it.
2. Why spend my whole life moving stuff from one wrong place to another?

I'm in love with minimalism. Simplicity, frugality, anticonsumerism, veganism, greenieness - it goes with all of these and nothing has made me this happy since the children were born. Apologies to the DH!

No shortage of great stuff online for being a minimalist - I'll be linking to lots of my favourites. But a minimalist with kids? Looks like I have to start my own. That's cool, because New Zealand is a really great place to be a minimalist.

My house...well, it still looks like a house occupied largely by children. But I've applied my minimalist mantra so many times recently that the change is visible. And peaceful.

Amazingly, I've owned BIG things for years and never considered whether they were good or bad for the house and my sanity. Furniture. An old TV. Metres of books that I never read. Stacks of blankets and cushions.

Some of these improvements have not even been frugal. We have had some gigantic speakers on permanent loan from a family member since we all left university, some AHERAHMMMMHUM years ago. They work really well. In days of yore, you could hear this system all the way up and down Grafton Hall from the 6th floor.

But because of the awesome humongousness of these speakers, we never ever opened one of our sliding doors. Well, hardly ever. For 2 years. Why does it take so long to notice these things? Is "good enough" always the main thing? The happy ending includes wall-mounted surround-sound speakers, and free access to our sliding door in time for the summer. And the ginormous speakers have gone to a more appreciative audience.

There's so much less, but wait!