Tuesday, February 17, 2009

My children are hoarders


I took out ten, count 'em TEN bags of garbage from my kid's rooms this week. And an additional six bags for Goodwill. How in the heck did they accumulate so much stuff in such young lives?

They found some things they forgot they had, so it was a little like a shopping trip for them. I had to stop them from rifling through each other's Goodwill and trash bags and simply trading garbage. They were pretty good about getting rid of stuff with only a few minor arguments. Sam wanted to keep a broken spark plug he found on the road last summer. I found about 25 socks strewn throughout Kira's room and a pair of old "accident" underpants hidden in a puzzle drawer. When I pulled them out and showed them to her she said, "What? I did that a LONG time ago." Like the statute of limitations for being in trouble for that was up. Gross.

Today they went with Mitch to the dump and they were DYING to get out and forage through dumpsters to collect more crap. They are going to be on Oprah someday because their houses will be full of old newspapers, half done craft projects, random electronic components, socks and dozens of cats and they will only be able to get from one room to another through narrow corridors carved into the garbage, and when Oprah's home improvement team comes in they will discover mold problems which will render their property worthless.

That's kind of a downer. Kind of glass-half-empty. On the up side, they seem to be pretty happy with all their newly accumulated space and newly discovered old toys so maybe they have learned a valuable lesson. Look for your freaks elsewhere, Oprah!

4 comments:

  1. I laughed so hard. You are a horrible mother, how could you make that poor boy dispose of that spark plug.

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  2. You know the funny thing is that we got rid of a lot of stuff that I would have caved on and let him keep, but he didn't put up a fight for anything but the spark plug. Weird.

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  3. Why do kids like crap. Murphy has beautiful expensive books, but he likes the ones he has chewed on and ripped pages from. Miyo has cute babies I bought new from the store, but she plays with straw ripped from the hamper weaving in the bathroom. Miles has all kinds of transformers and star wars toys, but his backpack contains: a flattened inside of a toilet paper roll. When questioned he says, "That's my telescope."

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  4. LOL about Miles' telescope! Sam made a TV out of a shoebox and waxpaper once and all the kids loved it. The cousins came over once and sat down and watched it! Five kids, sitting staring at a cardboard TV and fighting over the cardboard remote.

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