I think I am have just gotten to the point where I can almost admit full out that I am materialistic. Not materialist in the way that I want all that I see, but more on the sentimental aspect of materialistic. I have difficulty throwing things out. I know it needs to be done, but I have a hard time doing it. I'm not a complete pack-rat, but I come close when things have meaning. This becomes difficult when I live in a house with four other people. I do enjoy cleaning out an area, but it's hard to do with little hands of help always nearby and it's sometimes hard for me to figure out what to throw out and what I want to keep.
Tonight, I hit my breaking point. I knew it was coming. I had been seeing it come down the road for a number of weeks. Tonight was it's night to finally reach our house. My girls share a room. Usually, it's not a problem. Overall they play well together and bed times are too big a problem. Sometimes, it's even interesting to listen to their conversations in the dark as they rehash their days. Anyway, it was time to clean up their room. They picked up a couple of things then went back to playing, not really making any dent in the chaos of their toys. After dinner, we told them to go finish cleaning up before bath. At this point, Trinity decided to debate the true meaning of "clean". This is where it ended for me.
I went into their room and began gathering everything up. Toys, puzzles, books, crayons, coloring books, I mean everything. At this point, Trinity and Kalyn joined in putting anything in the big box. In my mind, their help made it worse. This was supposed to be punishment! In fact, they actually cheered when it was all taken out. All that's left in there is their bookshelf of books, their CDs and a few stuffed animals (in addition to their clothes, beds and dressers). By the way, this is the second time this has happened (the last one was probably 18 months ago).
So now I have the fun task of figuring out what to reintroduce to their room and what to leave out. It's all sitting in the front hallway in two boxes and one trash bag. We have a playroom downstairs, so it's not as if they have no toys at all for their entertainment. We just have the same issue that most of America has - too much stuff. I am thankful for the numbers of people who have showered us with toys, books and clothing when their kids are finished with it, we are just overwhelmed with stuff. I am seriously looking forward to a huge yard sale in the near future. Hopefully we can make some cash off our overabundance.
And that's my rant for today.
2 comments:
You can do it! My girls share a room and only have a bookshelf, dressers, and beds. All other toys are kept in the playroom (except-- Isabelle's age toys are in her room.) It limits the mess (most of the time) to only one room. They know that all stray toys must be taken back to the playroom!!! I love how de-cluttered their room can look when it's picked up. They play room is definitely lots of materialistic stuff.
I know what you mean Shannon. We just had our semi-annual consignment sale and I cleaned out toys, clothes, shoes and everything to sell. My kids helped and are used to it. Although my house is messy right now because I worked on that for two weeks (after being sick for the three weeks before that) I know when I clean and put it all back together, there will be less stuff than there was a week ago. The fact that I made over twice as much money as I spent on the clothes and shoes they needed for this season helps our budget too.
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