When More Tools in the Toolbox aren't Helpful

If you have too many tools, can you easily find what you need?

I’ve always been a person who thrives on categorization and organization. As a kid, my room was usually messy (like any normal kid’s), but when I did clean, I deep cleaned. I’d empty drawers, reorganize everything, and make systems where none existed. Mismatched hangers in my closet drove me crazy, so I invented rules: hoodies and sweaters went on fat white hangers, short sleeves on skinny white ones, long sleeves on blue. If my system didn’t fit the hangers I had, I’d raid my mom’s closet and swap. (She didn’t notice—she had no system at all.) My best friend would borrow my clothes, roll her eyes at my “hanger-width-color-shirt-style-system,” and proceed to mess it all up.

As an adult, the hardest thing I’ve had to learn is living with other people’s “systems.” To me, their chaos. Why wouldn’t you section drawers into sweatpants, leggings, and jeans? Or fold underwear neatly on one side, socks paired on the other? My solution for survival as a mother has been simple: everyone puts away their own laundry. That way, I don’t have to look at their madness.

But some clutter can’t be ignored. Like when we just have too much stuff. And I say this as someone who loves “stuff.” I like gadgets. I like technology. My husband and I once argued over whether keeping four whisks was reasonable. (I insisted yes—because they’re each “great at different kinds of whisking.”) I also hoard boxes that might be perfect someday for a gift or craft project. Doesn’t everyone keep a tote of “good boxes”?

The truth is, too much stuff—whether in closets or in our brains—is overwhelming. We shuffle it into junk drawers, stack it in the garage, or invent elaborate systems to make it seem manageable. But those systems don’t fix the real problem: we only have so much space (physical, mental, emotional). At some point, too much is too much.

Take cleaning supplies in my house. At one point, we had:

• bathroom cleaner

• vinegar water

• kitchen cleaner

• homemade dusting spray

• several unlabelled bottles

Every week my kids would ask: “Which spray do I use again?” or “Can I use this on the shower?” I thought they were weaponizing incompetence, until I realized the problem was me. I kept changing the rules. “Yes, last week we used vinegar in the bathroom, but after some research I learned it isn't good for the stone countertop. Use this instead. Except on the toilet, vinegar’s fine. Oh, but in the other bathroom…” No wonder they were confused! Nobody but me was living inside my ever-evolving cleaning system.

And here’s the connection: sometimes, in teaching kids to read, we do the same thing. We overwhelm them with too many tools.

Reading Doesn’t Need 200 Cleaning Products

Learning to read is complex—but not in the way we often make it. The brain must:

• see letters

• connect them to sounds

• blend those sounds into words

• attach meaning

• follow sentences and overall context

None of this happens naturally. It has to be taught.

For a long time, I thought (and was told by experts) that the best way was to give kids every possible tool: first, you'll need 300 phonogram tiles, then you must educate yourself on 8 rules for dividing syllables, memorize 30+ spelling rules, ready your lists of "red words" (they don't don't follow those rules and must be memorized), come up with some mnemonics, twist the way you pronounce certain words so they fit within the rules, etc. etc. I thought more information was always better. But for kids who struggle with the code, it’s not better—it’s clutter. How long do they stare into that cleaning cupboard trying to remember which bottle they are supposed to grab? At what point do they just give up and grab a random one because they are exhausted and it seems way too complicated to even bother?

Some reading instruction has become like my cupboard full of single-use cleaners, or my overly specific shirt-type-hanger-type system . . . or four whisks and a catchy mnemonic about which to use based on the viscosity of your mixture. (Anyone want to write that one up?) Some kids figure it out anyway, but many just feel overwhelmed.

Thankfully, most schools no longer teach outright guessing strategies like “Look at the picture” or “Based on the first letter, come up with a random word you think would make sense here.” or "Just skip it like our little frog friend over here!" While the science of reading has brought about major improvement in actually helping students to understand that that letters=sounds written down, kids are often bombarded with so many rules and exceptions about how to decode it that they’re still left without the skills to actually do the thing: read.

English is Messy, but It’s Still a Code

At its core, writing is simply speech written down. The alphabet is a code for the sounds of our language. Yes, one sound can have many spellings, and one spelling can represent several sounds. But it’s still a code.

And this is where organization matters. We can either:

• march kids through 200 rules, dozens of exceptions, and endless “decodable” lists

• or show them one clear system: letters and letter groups are just spellings for sounds they already know

A Speech-First Approach

Instead of starting with print-first rules, we start with what kids already have: their spoken language. We tell them, “Letters are just a code for the sounds you say.”

We show them how one sound can be spelled in different ways:

• /ee/ → me, team, chief, teen, ski, happy

That’s like showing a child that boxers, briefs, and boxer briefs may look different—but they all belong in the same drawer: underwear.

We also show that the code overlaps. The letter <a> can be /ay/ in acorn, /u/ in was, /i/ in stomach, or /a/ in cat. Same letter, different role—like the same Lego brick used in a spaceship one day and a castle wall the next. Mix up your lego sets, it's ok!

When kids reach multi-syllable words, they don’t need syllable-division rules. They just try out the code: maybe they first read entertain as eentertain. That’s fine. With practice and exposure, their brains correct it—because the code itself gives them the tools.

One Clear System

We don’t need 200 rules, 20 bottles of cleaner, or a closet full of hanger systems. We need one clear approach.

When kids learn to read through speech-to-print, we give them exactly that: a simple, logical system that connects what they already know (spoken sounds) to the spellings that represent them.

Teaching kids to read isn’t about memorizing endless rules or guessing from pictures. It’s about showing them that English spelling, for all its quirks, has an underlying order—and that they already hold the key: their own language.

Once the code is cracked, reading stops being guesswork. It becomes what it’s supposed to be: reading.