My kids have a lot of toys. A CRAZY LOT. I am not exaggerating, as is my wont, although I dearly wish I was. Just think about the mathematics of the situation: four kids, three sets of grandparents, two great grandmothers, a great aunt who is a grandmother/great-grandmother/and someone else indulgent all wrapped into one, and two parents. Oh, my kids' birthdays are in December, January, February, and March. With Christmas in the midst of it all. I think you're following me now.
We have a smallish house; three bedrooms, so that's good, but it's still not a huge house. We do not have big closets; however, we are blessed with a large shed out in the backyard. Therefore, when I had hollered at my big girls one too many times to clean their room, something inside me snapped. I got some big black garbage bags and put every single toy save two toys per child into the bags. These are big huge bags, too, not just wimpy lawn and garden bags. They are actually bags that fell off a City of Clinton truck as it barreled down the road and GH swerved to avoid them, noticed their high-quality and large size, and promptly scooped them off the street. Good job, honey. Don't let our tax dollars go to waste.
Anyway, GG2 cried a bit as I packed up toys, so I told her it was only temporary and if there was something she missed in two weeks she could have it back. She sniffily agreed, clutching some Barbies and a stuffed penguin to her chest; I let her keep out more toys than the other kids because she was the only one who cared. I also kept out the Legos and the train set; all four kids play with those toys pretty regularly. But everything else went into the garbage bags and out to the shed. I am embarrassed to tell you how many bags: four. Four, four-foot tall bags that are so huge you can't even believe that they can stand up to that many toys but remember, these are professional, side-of-the-road bags.
It's been three weeks since the dreadful packing up of toys and admitting to myself how overburdened we were. And guess what: the kids have literally not asked for a single thing. In fact, they have not commented even one time about all the missing toys. When it's time to clean their rooms or the living room, the chore is done in less than ten minutes. I don't think they notice or care that all the toys are gone. We still have tons of books everywhere, in every room, on almost every surface. But the toys and their commensurate clutter are gone. And no one notices but me: I am calmer, less stressed, less worried about the junk, and I am not afraid to open closets anymore because they are empty!
I still have lots of work to do on our home school clutter; I've been working all week on the school room and living room closet and so far it's not much better. But I will persevere because I learned a good lesson from packing up all those toys. It's really surprising to me that the kids have not noticed nor asked about all the toys; they simply play with what they have. Of course, one of their favorite toys is a big TV box that they use for all manner of games; I guess if all else fails we can just buy a new TV and give them the box. Certainly cheaper and less of a hassle than buying more toys!
After I made up my mind to pack up the toys, I read an article on the Tapestry of Grace website entitled "Training in Liberty." Here's the link: article. It is written to parents of teens but I think the lesson applied just as well to me and my young children. It is up to me, the mama, to make sure my kids are capable of taking care of their possessions at this young age. When they are grown and gone they can be completely in charge but right now it's up to me. And if that means packing it all up and shipping it out to the shed to sulk in the darkness for a while, then so be it.
This concept is probably familiar to many of you more competent moms out there, but it was a pretty novel idea to me. Kids don't need every blessed thing that they own to be at their disposal at every moment! Shift stuff around, pack it up, loan it out, give it away, throw it away: there is no reason my children need twenty five to thirty toys each. Two sounds good to me. And two toys is easy for them to pick up; even Tiny can toss Baby JoJo into the toy box and put her stuffed bear on her bed. As the summer heat forces us indoors, I might relent and let them have some more toys out of the shed. But I might not. I am enjoying this stripped down lifestyle and goodness knows, the kids aren't even aware of it. I do feel a bit deceptive, like I am pulling some big heist, but since they are happily oblivious, I am trying not to feel wracked with guilt. And yes, I do have bigger issues in my life than the state of my kids' rooms; but it does feel good to at least have made some progress in that area. Anybody want to start a betting pool about how long my kids can go without asking for the toys back? I've got a hundred on NEVER.
2 comments:
I can remember my dad did this with some of my younger siblings toys. They were not playing with them, and they were in the way. The toys were not missed.
Then several months later the dollhouse and accessories, and the toy kitchen and food were pulled out of the shed. You would have thought it was Christmas they were that excited about playing with their forgotten toys.
We did this a few years back because certain individuals, who shall remain nameless, were neglecting to pick up the toys. We bagged them, stored them and a few months later pulled them out and gave over half of them away. Only a few things had been missed. It was heaven! Way to go, sista!
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