I grew up in a small town, with plenty of room to run. My parents stopped at two children and my sister and I were nearly four years apart in age. I think this is the reason that I enjoy space. Some people value proximity to entertainment and shopping more than an additional bedroom in the home. Despite what I thought at eighteen years old, I am not one of them, and I consider mothers in tight spaces to be better women than I am.
We moved into our current home thinking that we were going to be content with two children. It’s a three bedroom home, which would have been ideal had that been the case. It wasn’t. Approximately two months after selling or donating nearly every baby-related item I had to my name, I found out I was pregnant. This also happened to be less than ten weeks after we had finished converting the duplex to that ‘perfect-sized three bedroom home’.
Children have a lot of stuff. They may be smaller, but my children can put most adults to shame with the number of possessions they have accumulated. About two years into living in this house, we realized that we had no place to put the toys that were overflowing from the kids’ bedrooms. So, not only did we make arrangements to have our boys share a room, but we moved our daughter into that space as well. Her bedroom became the toy room or, as I like to call it, Hell.
Two or three times a year I pop a valium (figuratively speaking), arm myself with a dozen garbage bags (literally speaking) and prepare to take on the doom that exists beyond the toy room door.
My kids are… treasured. ‘Spoiled’ is such a negative term, so we’ll go with treasured. Both sets of grandparents, my husband and I have helped to ensure that they never go without. No, they definitely don’t go without… they come with. Parents are all too willing to point out the long nights of no sleep, the myriad of dirty diapers, the raunchy smell of a soy based formula, and the many other less-than-pleasurable aspects of babydom, but what they fail to mention is the overabundance of belongings a kid can accumulate within a very short period of time.
That baby shower is so great, so helpful, when it is happening. It spares the new parents the tremendous expense of purchasing the many things needed to keep a baby happy, healthy and comfortable. However, it is also the beginning of something that most new parents don’t recognize immediately – the Great Toy Accrual. That adorably soft teddy bear that has been perched atop the baby-themed gift bag is ‘aw!’ worthy, but it will soon be buried among dozens of other stuffed animals, and they are just a pebble in the mountain of possessions kids will bring into your home.
I thought I was being so brilliant when I created a bin system in the toy room. There would be a specific place to store the toy kitchen accessories, a large basket for the Barbies, smaller bins for the Beyblades and DS games, and larger ones for the train set and wooden blocks. Surely, I thought, this will make it easier for the kids to pick up after themselves.
How I laugh at my younger, more naïve self. This didn’t make it easier for the kids. All it did was serve to make it more difficult for me to clean up after them. My oldest might have done all right with it. He tends to be the neatest of the three of them. He’s also content to play with a single toy at a time. But then my daughter progressed from the ‘I’ll just open all of the kitchen cupboards and empty them and then sample some dog food’ stage to the ‘I’m old enough to venture into the toy room and play by myself stage’. A break for mom? Not at all.
My daughter alone, particularly a couple of years ago, was akin to the perfect storm. She’s brilliant. She’ll make a wonderful actress someday, I’m sure. For she can lay out an entirely believable scene in five minutes flat.
There is no playing with a simple doll and stroller. She becomes the mom. The baby will need:
- a bed to lay upon (pillow from her bed and blanket from the chest downstairs),
- toys to play with (a bin of finger puppets dumped on the floor around the doll),
- a bottle to drink (a toy bottle filled with water from the tap, which is left running after the bottle has been filled).
As the mom, of course, she will need:
- a purse and outfit for outings (empty out the dresser of dress up clothes),
- jewelry (hopefully not from my collection),
- high heels (from my closet),
- a cell phone (yet another bin dumped),
- money (the jug of change in the laundry room should have enough).
That’ll entertain her for fifteen minutes or so. Then, she’ll have a sudden desire to become a model, so everything will have to be pushed aside to make room for the runway.
As you might imagine, she’s not as fond of playing ‘maid’ or ‘janitor’, which brings us back to me with my garbage bags. Don’t worry; visualizing the price tags on the toys is generally enough of a mental pep talk to keep me from trashing everything.
In fact, the majority of the toys that are no longer in favor in our house are donated – which means simultaneously giving to children who aren’t so fortunate and dooming their poor mothers to similar messes.
We moved into our current home thinking that we were going to be content with two children. It’s a three bedroom home, which would have been ideal had that been the case. It wasn’t. Approximately two months after selling or donating nearly every baby-related item I had to my name, I found out I was pregnant. This also happened to be less than ten weeks after we had finished converting the duplex to that ‘perfect-sized three bedroom home’.
Children have a lot of stuff. They may be smaller, but my children can put most adults to shame with the number of possessions they have accumulated. About two years into living in this house, we realized that we had no place to put the toys that were overflowing from the kids’ bedrooms. So, not only did we make arrangements to have our boys share a room, but we moved our daughter into that space as well. Her bedroom became the toy room or, as I like to call it, Hell.
Two or three times a year I pop a valium (figuratively speaking), arm myself with a dozen garbage bags (literally speaking) and prepare to take on the doom that exists beyond the toy room door.
My kids are… treasured. ‘Spoiled’ is such a negative term, so we’ll go with treasured. Both sets of grandparents, my husband and I have helped to ensure that they never go without. No, they definitely don’t go without… they come with. Parents are all too willing to point out the long nights of no sleep, the myriad of dirty diapers, the raunchy smell of a soy based formula, and the many other less-than-pleasurable aspects of babydom, but what they fail to mention is the overabundance of belongings a kid can accumulate within a very short period of time.
That baby shower is so great, so helpful, when it is happening. It spares the new parents the tremendous expense of purchasing the many things needed to keep a baby happy, healthy and comfortable. However, it is also the beginning of something that most new parents don’t recognize immediately – the Great Toy Accrual. That adorably soft teddy bear that has been perched atop the baby-themed gift bag is ‘aw!’ worthy, but it will soon be buried among dozens of other stuffed animals, and they are just a pebble in the mountain of possessions kids will bring into your home.
I thought I was being so brilliant when I created a bin system in the toy room. There would be a specific place to store the toy kitchen accessories, a large basket for the Barbies, smaller bins for the Beyblades and DS games, and larger ones for the train set and wooden blocks. Surely, I thought, this will make it easier for the kids to pick up after themselves.
How I laugh at my younger, more naïve self. This didn’t make it easier for the kids. All it did was serve to make it more difficult for me to clean up after them. My oldest might have done all right with it. He tends to be the neatest of the three of them. He’s also content to play with a single toy at a time. But then my daughter progressed from the ‘I’ll just open all of the kitchen cupboards and empty them and then sample some dog food’ stage to the ‘I’m old enough to venture into the toy room and play by myself stage’. A break for mom? Not at all.
My daughter alone, particularly a couple of years ago, was akin to the perfect storm. She’s brilliant. She’ll make a wonderful actress someday, I’m sure. For she can lay out an entirely believable scene in five minutes flat.
There is no playing with a simple doll and stroller. She becomes the mom. The baby will need:
- a bed to lay upon (pillow from her bed and blanket from the chest downstairs),
- toys to play with (a bin of finger puppets dumped on the floor around the doll),
- a bottle to drink (a toy bottle filled with water from the tap, which is left running after the bottle has been filled).
As the mom, of course, she will need:
- a purse and outfit for outings (empty out the dresser of dress up clothes),
- jewelry (hopefully not from my collection),
- high heels (from my closet),
- a cell phone (yet another bin dumped),
- money (the jug of change in the laundry room should have enough).
That’ll entertain her for fifteen minutes or so. Then, she’ll have a sudden desire to become a model, so everything will have to be pushed aside to make room for the runway.
As you might imagine, she’s not as fond of playing ‘maid’ or ‘janitor’, which brings us back to me with my garbage bags. Don’t worry; visualizing the price tags on the toys is generally enough of a mental pep talk to keep me from trashing everything.
In fact, the majority of the toys that are no longer in favor in our house are donated – which means simultaneously giving to children who aren’t so fortunate and dooming their poor mothers to similar messes.