Pare It Down 2009: The Kids’ Rooms

Dear Friends & Family:

Please do not give our children ANYTHING ELSE EVER.  Your generosity has reached the point of child abuse.

Thank you,

The Cranky Domestiquette

My kids are required to keep their rooms picked up.  I’m not doing this because oh my gosh what will my mother-in-law think! I’m doing this to teach them to take responsibility for themselves, to take good care of their own property, and to have pride in the way they live.  When everything is scattered in every direction, pieces get lost, toys get broken, and playing is not as much fun.

My children are 8 and 5 years old, respectively.  There is ONLY SO MUCH CRAP that an eight-year-old or a five-year-old can deal with.  Why would you want to burden them with the responsibility of more STUFF than they can possibly take care of, so that they are constantly in trouble for not keeping it picked up?

In the interest of not giving every pedophile on the internet a map to my home, I’m not publishing pictures of their rooms & play room.  I am, however, about to post a picture of the TRASH that came out of their two bedrooms & the game room.  This is just the stuff that was so broken I couldn’t bring myself to even donate it to charity, okay?

Now before you get all “well DUH Dumb-estiquette, we’ve seen the rest of your house!”  let me add this:  I don’t think it’s fair to ask my kids to keep clutter clean so I keep their rooms pretty well sorted out.  The last time I had a giant sort-out in their rooms?  LESS THAN THREE MONTHS AGO.  This is only three months’ worth of broken toys, papers, magazines, sticker books, and other assorted flotsam.

I didn’t go up there to do this.  I went up there to vacuum.  I couldn’t even vacuum, it was so bad.  So we hit it hard.  And this is what we came up with.

If you add up those bags, you’re looking at 172 gallons of storage capacity.  The bags that aren’t full got so heavy that I was afraid the bag would tear.

I have some more items hidden away, toys that I don’t think they’ll miss.  When I’m not 100% sure, I just hide the toy for 3-6 months and if they still haven’t noticed it’s gone, I get rid of it.

So I’m looking at all this crap, and I am begging you, dear family & friends: STOP.  PLEASE STOP.  I know you think you’re being generous, but all you’re doing is stressing us out and overwhelming the kids.  The next time you are tempted to purchase something for my kids, stop in your tracks, put your wallet away, and come to my house.  Pick them up and take them to the park, or riding bikes, or roller skating, or whatever.

Instead of buying them some dumb plastic thing make a memory with them that they can keep forever & that won’t just collect dust in the corner until we finally throw it away.