My 4-year old daughter Mia is having a friend over tomorrow, so I decided to try tackling her room first today. It's a small room. Legally, I don't even know if you can call it a bedroom, more of an office really. Couldn't be too rough right?
First of all, where did this girl get all these flippin' stuffed animals? I don't remember buying them for her. Santa didn't hook her up. The grandparents might pick her up one here or there, but nothing like the zoo that she is creating in her bedroom. I am serious wondering if these fuzzy critters aren't reproducing on their own when we are not around. Which creates a disturbing mental image that I apologize for putting in your head.
And then there's the crayons. A random crayon here. A half-eaten one there. And everytime we put them in the basket, the basket gets knocked over and we half to start all over again. Seriously, crayons are cheap right? Only a buck a box? And yet I've picked up the same box about 27 times in the past 30 minutes. I would just hit Walmart and buy a new one, but again, a buck is a buck.
I believe that it's important to get kids involved in cleaning up around the house. It teaches them respect for their belongings and household. Teaches them responsibility and independence. And hopefully they can do it all by themselves one day. But today, I was seriously wondering if the lesson was worth the hassle. Everytime I would put something away, Mia would take it out again. It was like I was discovering all of the toys that she had hidden under the mountain of stuffed animals and she was reveling in the newness of her old toys.
But too many toys is too many toys and so many of her toys are just parts of themselves now, as they have gotten lost or broken over the years. I figured this would be the perfect time to really engage her (ie, stop her from undoing all of the cleaning I was doing) and teach her to pare back.
I told her that we were going to look at her toys and decide which ones she wanted to keep, which ones she wanted to give to poor kids and which ones we could just throw away.
She actually got excited. She was thrilled to be relieved of some of the baby/toddler toys that had been cluttering up her room. She felt so grown up knowing some of her baby stuff would go to help another "baby."
And then we came across the head. Mia loves to play with Barbies. Most of them are naked. Many of them have had hair cuts. And lots of them have Sharpie tattoos. This was I believe once a Cinderella Barbie, that now was without a body. I don't know when she had become decapitated, accidentally or not, or who the perpetrator was. She was just a disembodied head, smiling that Barbie smile, painted-on twinkle in her eye.
"Hey Mia," I said. "Should we just throw this in the garbage?" And my daughter looked at me like I was crazy. "No way!" she said. "You never know when we might come across a body that might need a head."
I started to think about all of the things that we just throw away. Things that seem useless or "in the way" or just not worth our time. Things that at one point we cherished and now, that they are broken or incomplete or just not "new" anymore, just get put into the garbage. Ideas, feelings, relationships. Things we give up on because we just don't know what to do with them at the time. Maybe, we should just put these things in a special box in the closet, wait a little while, have a little faith, and keep our eyes open for a body.
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