Week 5: Our family has too much stuff
Our family has too much stuff. We are overwhelmed with “things” all over the house. It is a wonderful problem to have people love and want to gift items to your children. And we gave too. I was constantly looking for the next educational gadget, book, or game. Jeff liked the nostalgic stuff. I got bored and lonely during the winter and other down times and would take the boys to Target to buy things we didn’t need. Jeff would spend money on big electronic things, we also didn’t need. Until one day we looked around us and felt like our house was getting so small. We were getting busier schedules as the boys got older and had missed the fact that piles of stuff, now useless to us, was taking up so much space. At the same time, we realized most of this stuff the boys didn’t play with or we didn’t use, mainly because we didn’t remember it was on a shelf or in a bin somewhere (or worse yet, in a stack in the dreaded basement.) We thought about all the people we knew whose storage rooms were tidier than our bedrooms. We made excuses to ourselves about how we hadn’t moved so we hadn’t done a big clean-out ever, how we had a busy schedule so the drop and pick it up never method had become habit, how we should have a garage sale or throw things out. The truth was, we needed to stop buying useless things. We needed to step back and reassess what we were gifting our boys
Now, I’m a huge birthday fan. I can repeat this a million times and never get tired of it. I love birthdays! I love celebrating another year of life, our adventures, our friends and family. I love giving gifts on our birthdays to the people we love. I love doing special things and eating special food to remind us of all the good moments in life. But this was a big source of our accumulation of stuff. The boys were receiving gifts and we were giving goodie bags chock-full of trinkets (which we always kept extras of, you know, just in case we needed 50 rubber duckies and 27 pairs of Clark Kent glasses.) So a couple of years ago, we changed our birthdays from a gift receiving party to a way to earn money for something the boys are passionate about and want to make better in the world they enjoy residing in. I was tentative about asking the boys. It is hard for a kid to understand they most likely won’t be getting many gifts for their birthday anymore. So, I worked it in slowly, showing them the things around the house we don’t use or play with. We talk a lot about causes in need, so I would mention the thought of giving to them for birthdays instead of getting presents. The boys said they would think about it and when the time came, they chose animals they cared about and knew were in need. The kids invited enjoyed donating to the cause (usually animal related) and the boys enjoyed knowing they could help make things better for an animal or cause they loved. Bonus, less stuff.
Step two was Christmas. We love Christmas at our house too, so you can imagine the willy-nilly plan-less gift giving we were instituting. Christmas is magical – have all the presents! Well, a few years ago, we introduced the little gift rhyme so many parents I know love: Something they like, Something they need, Something to wear, Something to read. This helped, but we went a little deeper and chose to make as many of these gifts as possible about experiences instead of things. We love getting to experience things as a family and Jeff and I are painfully aware of the short time we get to have these two amazing kids in our house, so instead of crap they won’t play with, we started purchasing gifts of experience. Sometimes this is camelbaks or sleeping bags for our summer road trips. Sometimes it’s tickets to Wild Kratts or to go ice skating. Sometimes it’s a basketball hoop for the driveway, and a few years ago, we started purchasing tickets to the Wellmark Family Series of plays at the Civic Center. The boys loved it. There are typically four plays in a season, which run over the winter months (nice thing to do when it’s getting cold!) The plays are all geared toward children and families. They often include a fairytale or familiar story, sometimes some acrobatics, sometimes a group of musicians. They are a very reasonable price. We liked to get dressed up and we always get there an hour early, because in addition to the play, there is programming prior to the performance. There are craft stations, story telling, dancing, animals, science demonstrations, or musical instrument stations. There is button making for each play and a musician playing in the hallway. It has now become a tradition for us. The whole family looks forward to going every year.
We had our first in the series for the 2018-2019 season this last weekend. The play performed was The Ugly Duckling, told with lights and music. I love to watch the boys giggle through the silly parts and snuggle a little closer during the villainous parts. I love that they don’t mind dressing up for the plays and how excited they get to go experience some art and culture. And I love the way we are slowly, but surely cleaning out all the needless things from our house, while accumulating memories instead of stuff.
For more information about this series (yes you can still purchase tickets!) click on this link: https://desmoinesperformingarts.org/season-tickets/wellmark-family-series/
