I was away for a month for a family emergency (no, nobody died), with kids left in the care of their dad and grandma. On returning home I found all our worldly possessions - toys, books, clothes and the rest of it, that I had sorted, boxed and organized for years, out in the open, strewn on the floor, stacked in shelves, stuffed under tables and beds. I was horrified. I lost it for a few days and I think everyone including the kids were wondering whether I should have just stayed away!
On some reflection I realized that it is not anyone's fault that they could not keep things organized. The problem is that we just have too much stuff and I am convinced, more than ever, that I need to drastically reduce our possessions. I spend too much time taking care of "things" and not enough time caring for "people" and that is plain wrong. For the past year or so I have been extremely wary of buying anything that is going to sit around the house. I give it a lot of thought and only buy what we really, really need. This is not enough. I need to get more aggressive in reducing what we don't need - we need to come down to absolute minimum, and then slowly add high quality thing that we cherish and that last us a while.
I noticed that the only way my girls play with Legos and Lincoln logs is use them as food in their doll and animal games. We invariably end up with little bowls full of Legos and Lincoln Logs, often mixed up with other stuff and I have decided not to spend minute them. Yesterday I packed away Lincoln logs in a box to be donated, but couldn't get myself to get rid of the Legos. I put them in a "save for later" toy box. Does depriving my girls of Legos make me a bad mother?
Raising kids in a non-native environment while constantly worrying about striking the right balance.
2 comments:
I completely agree with you on the thought that we should give people more time (and space) rather than to things - i try to do that by having minimum things that need 'upkeep'. Our house is furnished with minimum paraphernalia. As regards to old toys I think I am more attached to them than my daughter(that is what I have found out)! So I stash it overhead for sometime or till I/she remember (its always me who remembers) and then realizing that we still had a happy time and more space (less things to dust) without it – look out for someone and give it away! Board games are the worst I tell you. The only hitch here are the books as the more we read them the more possessive we (me/daughter/hubby)become of the browsed copies that we still have them all around. Recently I dispatched 2 boxes of books to my brother’s son and on my annual visit there, read all the Noddy and other tales late into the night. Banes of attachments. That to for inanimate things.
I no longer buy books and movies. The public library system here is excellent, so I and the kids get whatever we want from the library. If we find something really good that we find ourselves borrowing multiple times, I buy the thing. Now, to convince my husband to follow this system and also get rid of his college notes!
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