My child is a packrat. I think most children are, but how do you get them to let go of stuff they no longer use. Lily doesn’t mind getting rid of clothes that don’t fit her, but toys? Oh, my God! You would think that I’d asked her to cut off her arm. That stupid toy from McDonald’s? The one she doesn’t play with unless I pull it out to toss? It’s her absolute favorite and, suddenly, she has to play with it now. She’ll die if we put it in the recycle where it belongs. That made in China toy she got as a favor at that birthday party? You know the ones that everyone buys for less than a dollar to give out at their kid’s birthday party, but shudders at the thought of coming home with from someone else’s? Yeah, that’s her favorite, too. She’ll die without that piece of junk, too. That drawing she made… It’s a piece of art that we can never recycle. Which is fine… if she didn’t draw 20 of these a day. Those snakes you make from straw covers–they’re toys we have to keep. Have to keep them. She will die if we don’t.
And picking up at home? Oh, God, no. She will clean her friends’ rooms, down to organizing by color. When she leaves her friends’ house, their room looks like a professional organizer was hired. Her room? A hurricane hit it. If I talk to her about cleaning it, it’s a melt down.
ARGH! Mom is having a melt down.
I remember thinking that when my sister-in-law got rid of my nephews’ stuff when they weren’t around, that it wasn’t cool, but, now? Now, I get it. I so get it.
Is this evil? Should I do it? Hm…
Do you?
That’s a tough one. Personally, I think it wouldn’t hurt for you to remove some of the stuff she never plays with. If you do it a few pieces at time, chances are good that she’ll never miss it. lol Once my kids got old enough (around 6 or 7 years old) I refused to clean their rooms for them. We had rules like I only vacuum the area where the floor is clean. And if it wasn’t in the laundry basket, it didn’t get washed. We didn’t fight about it. I picked my battles and making them clean their rooms or make their beds just didn’t seem like a priority. Good grades and good behavior were the priorities.
You really have no choice unless you really WANT to end up in a straightjacket. My mother used to do that to me — she’d wait until I spent the night elsewhere and when I got home, the whole room was RE-ORGANIZED and CLEAN!!! Gahhhhhhh!! Made me so mad, but ended up I didn’t miss what went missing, so, it’s a necessary evil, I think.
Jut let her keep them Marci… in time she will let them go
Just let her keep them Marci…..in time she will let them go!!
She’s nine, Nita. If we don’t help, she wouldn’t be able to reach her bed. I wouldn’t be able to reach her bed. It’s a true disaster area. It doesn’t help that her friends come and often don’t clean up after themselves, mainly because she wants it done a certain way and they won’t do it the way she wants. She has too many rules about how it has to be done makes it nearly impossible to put things away.
I don’t think I want to do that to her, Christi. That’s a complete invasion, but I’d like her to get some things out of her room that are just unnecessary.
Yeah, I don’t know if she will, Audrey. It used to be that she would give her stuff to Grandma for her cousin to play with. Grandma’s house got full, and I had to stop that. So we clean out some of it and give other stuff away.