Stuff

How in the world can one little family acquire so much STUFF? Ugh! I'm decluttering, and it's proving to be a great exercise in anti-commericialism.

While Chloe was away, I cleaned and organized most of her room. I threw away a pile of silly little McDonald's toys, prizes from the library and the Halloween party she went to in October, etc. Just little blobs of plastic, intended to entertain a child for half an hour before being forgotten and left in the closet to collect dust and take up space. After that, I got a couple of big Rubbermaid tubs from Wal Mart and proceeded to pack away about half of her toys. I hauled it down to the basement and stuck it in the closet under the stairs. My plan is to switch out those toys with the ones I left out in a couple months, when boredom sets in. Amazingly, you can't even tell that anything was removed. That's how much STUFF she has. Her room still looks quite full.

What gets me is that she is constantly "bored". We could entertain an entire third world country with all the toys in this house, but my spoiled little child is "bored". Argh! She got in trouble once for refusing to pick up her toys. So I packed up everything - every single toy in her room, and took them out, and I tied her closet shut so she couldn't get into it. I left it that way for a whole day. You would think that would devastate a small child, no? But not her! She couldn't have cared less - she let her imagination entertain her all day long, with not one toy in sight.

I'm not buying that kid any more toys for a long time. It's a hard thing for me to do - I love buying her toys, it's so easy to do, and there are so many toys I want an excuse to play with! But she's overloaded with so much stuff that she doesn't even know what to do with herself. I'm talking like, for the next year, I'm not buying stuff for her.

===

I'm not really far off though, if I think about it. I cleaned out my closet. I am one of those girls guilty of standing in front of her closet and whining "I have nothing to wear!" when my closet is about to overflow with perfectly good clothing. I cleaned out my closet and pulled out a whole trash bag full of clothes, and you can't tell I took anything out. I'm putting the trash bag in the basement too - I had a hard time parting with some of the stuff, even though I haven't worn it in years, if ever. I have a lot of clothes that I love in theory, but when I actually put them on, they look terrible. ya know? So anyway, I'm putting the stuff in the basement and if I don't miss it at all in a year, I'm giving it all away to Salvation Army or something.

Maybe I should not buy myself any clothes for a year. ::gasp::: I'm so guilty of seeing some great deal at Kohl's and buying it, even though it's something I really don't need. I just love clothes, so much. Oy. I'm gonna consider that. It would be so good for me.

==