naomikritzer (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
naomikritzer) wrote2004-12-31 04:01 pm
naomikritzer) wrote2004-12-31 04:01 pm
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Over at ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
pegkerr's livejournal, Peg posted about trying to separate her daughter Fiona from some dearly beloved, but filthy-and-worn-to-rags t-shirts:
http://www.livejournal.com/users/pegkerr/360689.html
...and got a ton of comments from people suggesting how she could have dealt with it -- make a quilt! Cut out a scrap as a bookmark! Or a button cover! Or take pictures! Etc., etc., etc.
Lengthy commentary follows...
I found myself thinking about this a bit today. I'm quite certain that some (not all) of the armchair quarterbacks on the comment thread do not, themselves, have children. So among other things, they probably do not fully understand the incredible flow of STUFF that comes into your house when you have kids. My children have two sets of grandparents, not to mention two aunts and an uncle, all of whom love them dearly and give them presents. We also have some neighbors across the alley, a really sweet elderly couple, who will occasionally give them small gifts like pinwheels. Plus one of my mother's coworkers likes to send presents via my mother -- she's only met Molly once, and has never met Kiera, but likes to send things anyway. We get toys in Happy Meals. We get toys from vendors that Ed sees for his job. My children create toys from craft materials and discarded items of mine, and Molly creates an endless stream of craft projects. And they never want to throw anything away.
There are a couple of options. My mother's strategy was to throw things away while I was out of the house. This is much easier than doing it with your children present, and every mother who does this will swear that your children almost never notice that stuff is missing. Every now and then I did notice, of course, and my mother would make some vague comment about things getting lost. I concluded from this that I was very absent-minded and prone to losing things. Also, since this was always done behind my back, I didn't learn the skill of separating from the stuff I didn't need anymore. I didn't learn how to discard clutter, how to throw things away. So in our not-terribly-large south Minneapolis home (probably about the same size as Peg's), we find ourselves drowning in stuff. We have slowly been learning to get rid of stuff, though I still shrink from throwing things away that could be useful to someone -- I Freecycled some of the junk from our basement, but even just giving things away on Freecycle can be a startling amount of work. You have to post, answer the e-mails, figure out what day people are coming and set stuff out...
Anyway. So that's one option, the sneaky option. I think most mothers do it that way. Or you can go with direct confrontation, like Peg. This is a lot harder. But I also think these are really useful skills. We need to learn how to separate from things. To identify the stuff that is taking up space and get rid of it. (She said, glaring at the inkjet printer that hasn't been used since 1998, the piles of floppy disks that contain who-knows-what, the nice wooden chair with the ripped-up pad...)
The third option is to drown in your own stuff. Oh! Or, if this is financially feasible for you, you can buy more space. Buy a bigger house, rent a storage unit -- either way, it's a lot of money to spend on an inability to separate from objects, and eventually, you will fill that space, too.
The "make a quilt!" option is a delightful idea if you're an empty-nester or something. I can't imagine where I would find time to sew a quilt, myself, and I have a lot more free time than Peg. (I also don't really know how to sew -- I can do simple repairs, buttons, hems, and so on, but quilts require more precision than I have patience for.)
Anyway, I reflected on this while sorting through some of Molly and Kiera's accumulated junk in the living room. I gathered up a bin of it, took it down to the basement, and tossed most of it, unsorted, into a box marked "TOYS." Molly and Kiera (and Fiona) aren't the only ones who have trouble getting rid of stuff. By the way, does anyone need a fold-up shopping cart? They're welcome to the one using up space in the trunk of my car. They would also be welcome to the folding luggage cart I bought at Target only a couple of months ago, with the idea that I would use it for the carseat when we fly (we have to lug it through the airport to our gate, since we use it during the flight). It didn't work. The tags from the luggage cart got pulled off and lost by the girls, though, so I can't return the stupid thing. Anyone need it?
pegkerr's livejournal, Peg posted about trying to separate her daughter Fiona from some dearly beloved, but filthy-and-worn-to-rags t-shirts:http://www.livejournal.com/users/pegkerr/360689.html
...and got a ton of comments from people suggesting how she could have dealt with it -- make a quilt! Cut out a scrap as a bookmark! Or a button cover! Or take pictures! Etc., etc., etc.
Lengthy commentary follows...
I found myself thinking about this a bit today. I'm quite certain that some (not all) of the armchair quarterbacks on the comment thread do not, themselves, have children. So among other things, they probably do not fully understand the incredible flow of STUFF that comes into your house when you have kids. My children have two sets of grandparents, not to mention two aunts and an uncle, all of whom love them dearly and give them presents. We also have some neighbors across the alley, a really sweet elderly couple, who will occasionally give them small gifts like pinwheels. Plus one of my mother's coworkers likes to send presents via my mother -- she's only met Molly once, and has never met Kiera, but likes to send things anyway. We get toys in Happy Meals. We get toys from vendors that Ed sees for his job. My children create toys from craft materials and discarded items of mine, and Molly creates an endless stream of craft projects. And they never want to throw anything away.
There are a couple of options. My mother's strategy was to throw things away while I was out of the house. This is much easier than doing it with your children present, and every mother who does this will swear that your children almost never notice that stuff is missing. Every now and then I did notice, of course, and my mother would make some vague comment about things getting lost. I concluded from this that I was very absent-minded and prone to losing things. Also, since this was always done behind my back, I didn't learn the skill of separating from the stuff I didn't need anymore. I didn't learn how to discard clutter, how to throw things away. So in our not-terribly-large south Minneapolis home (probably about the same size as Peg's), we find ourselves drowning in stuff. We have slowly been learning to get rid of stuff, though I still shrink from throwing things away that could be useful to someone -- I Freecycled some of the junk from our basement, but even just giving things away on Freecycle can be a startling amount of work. You have to post, answer the e-mails, figure out what day people are coming and set stuff out...
Anyway. So that's one option, the sneaky option. I think most mothers do it that way. Or you can go with direct confrontation, like Peg. This is a lot harder. But I also think these are really useful skills. We need to learn how to separate from things. To identify the stuff that is taking up space and get rid of it. (She said, glaring at the inkjet printer that hasn't been used since 1998, the piles of floppy disks that contain who-knows-what, the nice wooden chair with the ripped-up pad...)
The third option is to drown in your own stuff. Oh! Or, if this is financially feasible for you, you can buy more space. Buy a bigger house, rent a storage unit -- either way, it's a lot of money to spend on an inability to separate from objects, and eventually, you will fill that space, too.
The "make a quilt!" option is a delightful idea if you're an empty-nester or something. I can't imagine where I would find time to sew a quilt, myself, and I have a lot more free time than Peg. (I also don't really know how to sew -- I can do simple repairs, buttons, hems, and so on, but quilts require more precision than I have patience for.)
Anyway, I reflected on this while sorting through some of Molly and Kiera's accumulated junk in the living room. I gathered up a bin of it, took it down to the basement, and tossed most of it, unsorted, into a box marked "TOYS." Molly and Kiera (and Fiona) aren't the only ones who have trouble getting rid of stuff. By the way, does anyone need a fold-up shopping cart? They're welcome to the one using up space in the trunk of my car. They would also be welcome to the folding luggage cart I bought at Target only a couple of months ago, with the idea that I would use it for the carseat when we fly (we have to lug it through the airport to our gate, since we use it during the flight). It didn't work. The tags from the luggage cart got pulled off and lost by the girls, though, so I can't return the stupid thing. Anyone need it?