Thursday, August 21, 2008

Purging

This weekend I am hosting a baby shower at my home. While that sounds fun, the process involved in getting ready for the event is not so fun. I like my home to be neat with every little piece of lint in it's place. Seriously. And while this is not a bad thing, it is when you are a total slob and also have 2 very small children who run wild and free throughout your home everyday tearing it apart.

Like most people I waited until the last moment to start the cleaning process....and yes it is a process. I mean why pick up earlier when the house will just be destroyed again 10 minutes later. So I waited until tonight to begin to straighten up my home so it can be cleaned tomorrow morning bright and early. Then I will just have to keep my little hooligans out of the house until the party....."who wants to go to Target and the bookstore and Mimi's house, who wants to eat out, who wants ice cream after dinner, who wants to ride around until they fall asleep in the car and then be carried into bed?" Okay so I am not going to do all those things, but that is seriously what it would take to keep a house clean for over 24 hours these days. And besides keeping the kids out, I would also have to lock Josh and I out until at least an hour before the shower began. We are that bad people.

But back to my point (I won't say I digress because everyone blogs that term lately), my point being that as I looked around to begin the picking up portion of the cleaning process I wanted to scream. For the first time I realized how many toys we own and are taking up residence in this house. So many that we are literally shitting toys, I mean anytime you ass touches any kind of surface in this house you are more than likely to sit on something that squeaks, cries, rolls, moves or makes some other hideous noise. Really....has my life come to this, the house with too many toys? The mom who can't say no, the mom who gives in and buys crap, the mom who spoils her kids. Then I realized no that isn't me at all. I am the mom who cannot throw a damn thing away. Well I can, but not perfectly good, working toys that have all the pieces. And I also realized that while I did buy a large portion of these toys, an even larger portion of them were gifts. For the love of all things holy in the world.....DO NOT buy my kids anymore freakin' toys!

We have toys in every room in my house from my bathroom, to the kitchen and every room in between. The kids rooms each have at least 2 baskets fulls with more on the floor and the toy room looks like a toy walk in closet that you can't exactly walk in. The sight of the toys wanted to make me scream. So I did what any irrational, insane mother with too little sleep would do. I grabbed several large bags and started filling them up. I didn't even look back. I didn't care if the toy was brand spankin' new or 2+ years old. I didn't care if it had all the pieces or was broken in shambles. If I hadn't seen the kids play with it in the last five minutes it was history, okay so not the last five minutes, but the last five months. I filled up five garbage bags faster than rice cereal turns into paste.

I just started walking around aimlessly in my home throwing toys in the bags.

"Momma what you doing? Momma you cleaning up?"

"Yep, I'm putting these toys away!"

"Momma I want dat" trying to pull a random toy she hasn't touched in months out the bag

"Nope we are giving these to the poor kids" grabbing the bags from her toy crazed hands

"Da poor kids" trying to peek inside the coveted bags

"Yep"

"like Adayn"

"Sure we can give all this crap to Adalyn, I'm sure Mrs. Katey would love it"

So tonight my friends Josh and I picked up for over 3 hours and after several bags for the trash and several bags for the good will, my house and my soul are feeling much better. And again I beg of you, if you feel the need to buy or give my child a gift... how about socks, we can never find two of those that match!

16 comments:

jennlagdavis said...

i am with you on this! (and I'm almost a year behind you in the kid deartment). for mikey's 1st birthday we asked that no one buy him toys and instead used the money they were going to spend to make a donation to St. Jude in his name. now he has lots of cards from St. jude in his baby book letting him know how many children were helped. :)

Jess said...

Hahaha! In a way I'm glad Kevin keeps me restrained in the buying department...otherwise, this would be me. We just want to give our kids everything. I have a hard time parting with working items, myself.

Adalyn's World Views said...

Exactly. THat is what Adalyn needs, socks. She wore two different pair today!

Anonymous said...

Wow, "poor kids". Perhaps instead of teaching your child to put labels on people less fortunate than yourself, you can tell her that you're giving them to children who don't have as many toys as they do, that she's sharing.

"Poor kids", I'm very offended by that. I shop at Goodwill. I don't like to think of myself as poor, I like to think I'm frugal and smart in this shitty economy.

mandi said...

Anonymous you make a valid point, I don't label people and never said anything was wrong with Goodwill I've been there myself. Next time perhaps you can leave your name with your comments. Thanks!

Adalyn's World Views said...

We must remember that this is a blog. Not an direct rendition of what was said between mother and child. We are doing are best to raise our young children and to take the time to critize someone annoymously on a blog for friends and family is no better than a mother who was "labeling" people.

Anonymous said...

Dear anonymous,
Maybe instead of going to goodwill and getting on someone because they are GIVING toys to poor kids, you should skip goodwill and go to church to improve your language. I am offeneded by the word Shitty! The economy is what you make it.

Anonymous said...

Adalyn's World Views said...

"We must remember that this is a blog. Not an direct rendition of what was said between mother and child."

So this blog then is enhanced versions of a conversation or event that took place where the author has had time to come up with clever ways to pepper the story to make it more entertaining, thus making it a "based on previous events" story? I think perhaps I'll head on down to Goodwill and pick up some books that actually classify themselves as fiction instead of considering themselves non-fiction. That's what us "poor" folk do.

Jess said...

Overly sensitive people irritate me. Gimme a break, anonymous. This isn't the correct forum for your vocab critique.

Kate and Connor said...
This comment has been removed by the author.
Kate and Connor said...

Ok, I don't know who anonymous is but I love them! They have fired me up so much with their comments that it has forced me to learn how to blog! The only thing that I can say is that obviously anonymous is not only "frugal" but is jealous. Here is a verse that I received via email that says it loud and clear.

A peaceful heart leads to a healthy body; jealousy is like cancer in the bones.

~ Proverbs 14:30, NLT
Did you get that...cancer in the bones. Chill out and get a peaceful heart!

Olivia said...

Anonymous, follow me: breath in, breath out. Remember this from childbirth? Relax---there are many other things in the universe to get all huffed up about besides the bloggity blog. Ms Mandi is one of the good guys, trust me. Save your big ole bag of bull &#@$ for one of the bad guys:)

laurie said...

You Go Girls!!!! I am so proud of all of you!!! Such Silliness! Life is way to short!and precious for all of this. We must learn to choose our battles and this just doesn't seem like one we should pick!

mandi said...

So all it takes is a little drama for my commenters to come out of the woodworks! Thanks ladies, your support is appreciated.

Mmmommy said...

So not to stir up any drama again but (lol)... I'm not sure who anonymous is but I kind of agree with him/her, Mandi. When I rolled over to your blog this morning I read that part "poor kids" and thought that maybe the term was used not intentionally to be insensitive but that's how it turned out sounding to some people. Just an FYI I hadn't even read the comments yet and probably wouldn't have except for the torn post had me curious.

I guess the way I see it is you wouldn't say that you're donating Slim Fast to fat kids. So to say that you're donating to poor kids is kind of the same, IMO. That's a wild exaggeration I know but it's just what came to mind.

For me it's not that they aren't poor, they probably are, but that doesn't mean I'd go around referring to them as poor kids, fat kids, ugly kids, etc. I would probably just say kids. I'd tell Maggie, and do when we donate, that we're giving them to other kids who are going to have so much fun playing with new toys. At some point she'll be old enough to get the concept of charity but for now I'd rather it not be associated with a negative stigma: poor. Instead I'd just like it to be a nice thing she's doing.

I'm sure I'm going to be bashed too, that's fine. I'm sure people are going to tear apart my example of "fat kids". I'm going to be told to pick my battles, given bible verses to read, etc. I just felt like I should also state my opinion WITH an identity. I'm curious to see how much of the response anonymous got because they chose to be anonymous, KWIM?

And finally Mandi, please know that I do understand that tone is everything and it's quite literally IMPOSSIBLE to hear a tone via the internet. I'm sure that in my head I hear it so much differently than it was said/meant, KWIM? I don't have any ill will towards you or your blog or anyone else for that matter, it's just my opinion.

FYI: I tried the OpenID thing thinking that's what would let me sign my name to this but it didn't. So I opened up a google blogger thingy but don't really have use for it. So FTR this is:

MMMommy aka Kim from pg.org

mandi said...

Kim, you make a valid point. I try to tell anonymous that. I don't go around referring to kids as "poor kids". I think most of everyone who responded here knows that. The post was meant to convey how frustrated I was by the amount of toys in my home. IF you read the post carefully I admit to be "insane, irrational, and sleep deprived." Yes I could have chosene my words better. However what this post has turned into is me feeling like I need to defend myself and I know I am a good mom and know that I really don't need to do that.

I appreciate you thoughts Kim!