We cleaned out the big toy-chest today.
The kids have slowly taken over the far corner of the livingroom with stuffed animals and blocks and legos (note to SG: Not just you!) and the sun porch looks like a toy tornado hit it. Today we worked on the living room.
Note to relatives: no more toy cars EVER.
So in the midst of matching puzzle pieces and assigning boxes and bins (and in the case of the dinky cars, a backpack*) to different things, I found a wooden train and car that had been my brothers', and seeing it in my daughter's hand made me realize how many things I have scattered through my life from home.
Big things - the kitchen table (it's the only one I remember my parents having) a hutch, a picture. My grandmother's bookcase is in the living room. My great-aunt Bertie's music box and all the photo albums my mother made. Little things - wooden spoons. My rings sit in a covered bowl that looks like a fish that I've had since high school. My baby cup. Books.
And yet... as I looked around I realized how much of Bear was here too. For the most part our stuff co-habits well (in large part because my house is (sigh) functional and not decorative in the least, so the mish-mash of common items works**) but in some areas - not so good.
At what point do things stop being my stuff and his stuff to my casual eye?
And I've lived here six years - when do the things I brought with me just become 'things I brought with me' and not 'things from home'?
*And it's FULL. Rosey almost went ass over teakettle trying to hoist it up on her shoulder.
**The best thing about our house? The side-yard. Definitely.
8 comments:
Great post - Lily has way too many toys - seems like I am cleaning them out all the time. You know what's great besides a big toybox?? Walmart has those bins that come with a pine shelving unit - the one we have has 12 bins and it is great! You can throw things in there and it still looks neat. Also, it is great for the kids because they can easily get toys out and put things back in themselves without having to dig every toy out of the toy box. I hate things lying around so these work very well for us. I try to only let Lily have a few toys out at a time but when her Dad is here with her, it's another story! Oh well, I guess I should just be happy he plays with her so much!
They become the things your brought with you when you don't remember a time when you weren't married.
-J.
As my husband and I get ready to move into our second house we're finding our stuff co-mingling more and more. I too have lots of treasures from grandparents and family, but he doesn't and I wish that his family kept sentimental things so that balance could be restored.
Loved this post about your home!
I like having a mish mash now. for years I used to want pristine tidy, but have long since given up on that. We LIVE here!
The Husband and I have been married for 17 years and we lived together for 6-8 months before that. We have very little anymore that we haven't gotten together. We did have a dining room set that belonged to his grandparents (terrible story about it going to the refinisher and the place burning down the day before they were to deliver it back to us) but we got it after we were married and so even it felt like "ours" as opposed to his or mine.
Ha! At our place, all the good stuff is mine and all the crap was Fixit's.
Glad I'm not the only one who's lost the "grown-up's room" to the toy-plague.
ugh, our livingroom is awash with the FB's toys too, as is the kitchen, the bathroom and part of our bedroom. I'd love to get rid of some of them but they'll get passed on to the Peanut so I can't...oh for a huge 5 bedroom house to store it all in
How do kids end up with so many toys? I find it slightly offputting that my son has so much stuff that he can't decide what to play with. And we don't even have half the kids' stuff that my friends have.
You've inspired me to clean up!
After 11 years, we still have the "your stuff" "my stuff" references even to things we've bought together, but they're getting fewer, I'm pleased to say!
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