Friday, October 15, 2004

Getting the carpet cleaned today, living room, hallway, kids' rooms. The challenge is getting all that stuff up off the floor. The clutter is especially bad in DD1 and DD2's room, if the Police came here, they'd swear that our house had been ransacked. I'd have to sheepishly say, 'um...officer, no, it's actually always like that.'
Honestly, we hauled a huge box full of junk/toys and at least 2 laundry baskets full of junk/toys out to the garage. There is still more junk in that room. Grandparents, if you're reading this, please no toys for Christmas for those girls! I'm not trying to be mean, but really they don't need it. It's an embarrassment of riches that here are my kids having more toys and junk than they can actually ever play with (or know that they have) and there are some kids who are so poor they won't get much of anything this Christmas.
We aren't rich, just average. I blame it on the low cost of plastic. If I had a nickel for every Happy Meal toy I found in that room, I would be rich.

We do have a very materialistic culture - I've finally realized that I must not show the girls the American Girl or the F.A.O. Schwartz catalogs that seem to matrialize in our mailbox this time of year. The American Girl features dolls that start at $98. The FAO catalog includes toys in the $2,000 bracket. When my kids, but DD1 in particular - see those items, they start to salivate. They feel hurt and jealous of the kids who can have those things. She starts to feel like every other kid in the USA gets those things, but she can't. It sets up a very negative train of thought. Instead of being thankful for what she has, she starts feeling slighted that she doesn't have those fancy things. I do also wish I could afford to get my kids things like those, but you know when it comes down to it, I don't think I would buy those things, even if I could. Just because we can have something doesn't mean we necessarily should. I would love to let my kids look at those catalogs just for fun (because window shopping is fun) but for my kids, especially DD1, it's a bad idea. If they ever figure out how to make their catalogues hit my mailbox on a Saturday, I'm doomed.

The AADD (Atlanta Alliance on Developmental Disabilities) will be picking up some castoff stuff from my house today. I am so tempted to just throw in the boxes of toys. But I won't. Not yet...if they are still there in 3-6 months, not being really valued, then they're out of here. One thing that's going that I'm glad of is a hefty computer monitor. Still works, I hope they can use it. Tired of tripping over it! Hurrah!!!

Then around 6 I'm meeting with an art client. Can I possibly cram more stuff into a single day?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

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