Question: Who is responsible for all this crap?

In keeping with my discussion about organizing and/or reducing the amount of STUFF we have, I came to a fairly unflattering conclusion today.

It's not my kids' fault they have so much stuff. It's mine.

DUH.

I mean, who is giving them the vast majority of their belongings? Me. Who spends the lion's share of the discretionary money in the household? Me. Who takes the kids to the birthday parties and dollar stores for all that (probably) pthalate-filled plastic crap? Me. Who is allowing these things to quietly reproduce while they sit in drawers unattended? Me. Okay, maybe not the last one, but you get my point.

I rail and rant and foam at the mouth about junk in our house, but I'm the one creating most of it! How can I teach my kids about valuing their things and being particular if I don't, and I'm not?

Nobody in this family is good at taking care of their stuff. I would venture to say that this is in part because we don't really have any good stuff. I mean, other than our computers, there aren't any valuable things in our house. Our TV is so old you can use it without a remote, our stereo is so old it has turntable and cassette options on the tuner, and over half of our furniture was either passed along to us (at a deep or full discount) or purchased at Ikea.

So maybe we don't care of our nice things because we just don't have nice things. But that's not the right lesson to be teaching our kids. People do more with much less. We are just numbed by our stuff. That doesn't seem right.

And I'd like to point out for the record that we don't even have THAT much stuff, compared to others in our socioeconomic demographic. I mean, every time I talk to my Dad, he complains about having too much stuff. And my sister's house is pretty full. And my Mom's house isn't sparse, but they do try to offload things at their annual community garage sale. People I know have full garages, albeit much neater, if you see what I'm saying.


The fact that we've moved so many times has cut down on our gross accumulation, but that doesn't mean we don't need to pare down. Stuff grows exponentially. I can go through this house any day of the week and fill a bag with stuff the kids (hopefully) will never notice are gone. Someone could go through my stuff and do the same, and I'd never know, though if I ever found out, my little proprietary hackles would be raised. "Hey, that's MY stuff!"

Ugh.

Holding a mirror up to oneself is not always flattering. But at least now I have a clearer picture of who the culprit is around here.