Complaint: The King of Ziplocs

My son has organizational issues. He’s a collector, first of all. Pennies, stickers, rocks, twigs, pebbles, shells, pencils, markers, crayons, oil pastels. He likes to have everything in its place, in little Ziploc bags.

At first, this was a good idea. He was putting things away, organizing, look at all those developmental skills!

The problem is, he doesn’t have any idea where to put the things. Plus his sense of inventory is poor, to say the least. He has NO IDEA what he has. But then I always get this surge of guilt as I am attempting to purge some of his untouched bags or old kindergarten homework, for fear of letting something precious go.

My son puts things in bags and hides or abandons them in random places, that I’m pretty sure he then immediately forgets about. We live in a bigger house now, and that’s riskier. There are a LOT more hiding places. There are also tons of new places to lose things.

I’m babbling now, I realize, because I’m just trying to work this all out. But I think that I got my son too many art implements and gave him too many baggies and the whole thing just spun out of control.

He has stuff, he wants more, but he doesn’t even know what he has. As that wonderful book by Peter Walsh says, It’s ALL TOO MUCH.

Periodically I go on a rampage, as I’ve intimated, and I end up getting rid of what I consider to be the least missed objects. And most of the time, he doesn’t notice things are gone. Ditto for my daughter.

But I live in fear of throwing out that one special something that belongs to my kids. It might only be a scrap of paper to me, but to them, it could be a magic treasure.

How do you reconcile that?

So for now, all the plastic crap that breaks once you use it, like the little parachute people and gummy animals that rip when you pull them apart to hard, (which is ALWAYS what happens), ALL that stuff goes.

I save mementos, and writing. But I don’t have to save EVERYTHING these children bring home from school, do I? I mean, surely Albert Einstein’s mother once in awhile just got fed up and threw some of his shit out, right? “Dammit, Albert, get those theoretical notebooks off my ironing board!”

What’s my point? I don’t know. I guess I’ve fallen into overconsumption, so it’s no surprise that my kids have, too. It’s up to me to help them reduce, reuse and recycle.

And stop using so many damn plastic bags.