I consider myself to be pretty crunchy, earth-friendly, resourceful, and thrifty. I pinch pennies, don't give in to my children's whims at the store, and accept hand-me-downs. I keep things because they are good toys and can be used by all ages and genders. I hang on to Hot Wheels tracks just in case Daniel develops an interest in cars. I appreciate the things we are blessed with because I know our lifestyle is different from other people and I don't want my kids to look at our family and feel resentment toward each other for hogging all the resources. But I can't keep everything. I can't.
People think that I take cast-off items because "I have such a huge family and could probably use it." I know their giving is an act of kindness, but it kind of isn't. They bought into the consumer lifestyle. Their kids didn't appreciate their stuff. They don't have any younger siblings to hand it down to (or they don't want to keep their childhood treasures for their grandchildren), so they send it to my house. Your treasures come here to die, did you know? That puzzle lost one piece the first day it was here. And I burned it with the rest of our paper garbage. That paperback book series you laboriously taped back together when the glue started to get brittle and the pages fell out? They will also be destroyed. I will find a chunk of pages and toss the whole thing. It's so wasteful, but that is our culture. I hate it.
But I don't think my kids get it. I think that because they get so many hand-me-downs, they feel no need to conserve what they have. Who cares if the dog chews up a My Little Pony? Someone will want to offload a whole bag on them in a few months, probably, and if not, they can always find one at the thrift store for the price of a tooth. Mom says, "Pick up all these repositional stickers NOW or they are going in the garbage!" Who cares? They can just ask for more for their next birthday or Christmas and since there are so many birthdays around here, they can just gang up and get group presents. "Pick up your clothes and stop putting clean clothes in the laundry for me to wash or I'm going to pack them all up into trash bags and then we'll see how you feel when you don't have anything to wear!" Oh, Dad would never let Mom keep their taekwondo uniforms and who ever heard of a naked ballerina? Mom and Dad paid for those lessons; they aren't going to keep them from their dance clothes and shoes and waste their money. And they don't really care if their clothes are stained and have holes-they're homeschoolers and no one sees them, right?
Sounds like my kids got just a little spoiled, doesn't it?
And it sounds like it is time to do some extreme decluttering. We have until the end of November to find out if everything in this house actually has a place. We have six short weeks to find out if we own more things than we have places for. If I don't have a perfectly clean house by the end of November, Christmas presents will be cancelled! Oh, we'll have a tree and candy, but no toys. No toys, no clothes, nothing with parts. No "consumable" craft projects (because the end product isn't consumable-it's more junk), no art supplies, no science kits. No games for family night, no critical thinking solitaire games, no self-contained learning activities. Nothing. This mom is DONE.
