The trouble with (tossing) toys
There’s nothing like Fall Clean-Up Week (a.k.a. Old Furniture as Curb Decor Week) to get you motivated to get rid of clutter. Fall and spring give most of us that natural urge to freshen and pare down for the upcoming season. And — don’t tell your kids, of course — this also means … *whispers* … toys.
I started a Toys-They-Never-Play-With pile a couple of weeks ago on the landing of our basement stairs. It included a doctor kit, a toolbox and a bowling set — none of which had seen any action in a long time.
But, silly me, I’d forgotten the magical rejuvenation process that happens to a toy when it’s facing expulsion. It suddenly becomes the most wonderful toy in the entire room! Why, any parent who thought they could get rid of such a toy is surely a monster with no heart!
For the past few weeks, I’ve picked up the pieces of that darn doctor kit over and over and hid it back in the pile. I’ve hunted down those annoying plastic tools and replaced them in the box. I’ve rounded up the bowling pins that keep getting scattered around the basement. You see, the toys seem fun for a second — “Mom, you CAN’T get rid of this! I love it!” — but they’re quickly forgotten about. Again.
(I was planning on selling the toys for a few bucks on the local Facebook buy/sell group, but at this point I’m so disgusted with the sight of them that I think they’ll be donated instead.)
Several of my friends are going through the same thing right now with their own kids. They’re overwhelmed by toys and books and puzzles and board games, but their kids swear each and every item is vitally important to their having a happy childhood.
The wisest course of action is to purge in secret, of course. I have done this, when I can be bothered to find a black garbage bag to hide the evidence. Two bags, actually — one for broken Happy Meal toys that are plain garbage, and one for items you just need to hide from sight until you can liberate them from the house.
The trouble with The Secret Purge is that you may stumble into disruptive feelings that make you abandon the whole project …
- Toys from babyhood: “Awwwww! They loved this weird light-up thingy!”
- Toys that will stand the test of time: “These wooden puzzles will still be great when they have kids someday.”
- Toys they received as a gift: What if the person who gave them the toy sees you selling it for $5 on the Facebook buy/sell group?! Awkward.
- Toys that someone paid a lot of money for: Especially if you are that person.
- Toys that might be worth money someday, like Beanie Babies and Cabbage Patch Kids once were: Although somehow I doubt the cheaply-made toys of today are ever going to be worth anything.
- Toys I want them to play with: See above, RE: expensive Calico Critters
- Toys that are wrecked/broken but keepsake-worthy because you can’t possibly throw them out: Every single doll in this house.
- Toys we should keep in case a baby visits: “We need to have SOME baby toys!”
- Toys that are utter crap but will be missed if you toss them: I’m looking at you, stuffed animals.
If I’m feeling even slightly emotional, I don’t like purging any of the above without the kids around. I start thinking of The Velveteen Rabbit and how shabby toys become “real” because they’re so loved.
What if I’m daring to throw out a stuffed animal that one of my kids is really attached to … even though I never see them play with it or even look at it? What if the beat-up dinky car with missing doors is actually really meaningful to one of them and I just don’t know it?
I still have my Barbies from when I was a kid and they are VERY special to me, so maybe I’m overly sensitive about this. If, for some reason, my mom had dared to donate my Totally Hair Ken, I guarantee I would have bought numerous replacements on eBay trying to find one that felt like he could have been my Ken.
So the doctor kit, the toolbox and the bowling set are staying — for now, at least.
Maybe by the time Spring Clean-Up Week rolls around, I’ll have more nerve.
The $75 bathroom makeover inspired by Chris Loves Julia
It’s sort of strange that a tiny basement bathroom in Nova Scotia could be inspired by a grand study in an Idaho home, but that’s just the reality of #PinterestLife.
We bought our home almost five years ago and our third bathroom — all the way down in the basement — hadn’t been touched. The walls were beige-on-beige. The tile was different shades of cream and beige. There wasn’t a window. It was incredibly dull but not offensive, so I just left it until I decided what to do with it.
My inspiration came in the form of a beautiful study in the home of Chris and Julia Marcum, better known as the DIY bloggers behind ChrisLovesJulia.com. It’s a dramatic dark green room at the front of their home with wall-to-wall floating bookshelves and touches of white and cream to keep it light. (It is definitely not a windowless basement bathroom.)
Since it wasn’t in the budget to swap out our existing beige tile — and that would be silly since it’s in great condition — I had to work with it. But that didn’t mean the walls had to keep the icky two-tone beige look.
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Can you choose your kids’ friends?
Our six-year-old son got his class assignment as part of his report card, in the form of a nice welcoming letter from his Grade 1 teacher. There was a flurry of Facebook-ing amongst the parents-of-Primaries I have as Facebook friends, and it looked like much of their sweet little Primary class was going to be split into different Grade 1 classes.
I wasn’t worried or even that disappointed when I saw that he wasn’t going to have many familiar faces in his new class. He’s a friendly kid and not usually shy. He went into Primary not knowing a single soul in the school and it wasn’t a problem, right?
But I must admit, when he came home on the first day and announced which kids were *not* in his new Grade 1 class … I was relieved. All throughout Primary, my son seemed drawn to the kids that acted up. He’d come home from school with stories of how they were “rude” or “didn’t show respect” or “made loud noises when the teacher was talking.”
He loved these kids — LOVED THEM. He thought they were hilarious and I became extremely paranoid that he was going to start copying them, dooming his entire educational journey from the start.
I asked his lovely Primary teacher about this (um, repeatedly) at parent/teacher conferences, and she assured me he wasn’t picking up on their behaviour. Still, though, I worried. When he’d tell me stories about their antics, I’d ask if they’d gotten in trouble and remind him that what they did was NOT COOL. He seemed to get that, and definitely didn’t want to get in trouble.
But it wasn’t just the classroom clowning-around that bothered me. These kids also weren’t particularly nice to him on the playground.
They teased him and tried to leave him out of games, or told him he had to play a bad guy while they got to be the good guys. They told him “only girls” did such-and-such, wore a certain colour, played with a certain kind of toy, etc.
Was this was typical kids-on-the-playground stuff? Was it happening to lots of other kids? More importantly, why was my kid OK with it happening to him? Was this going to set him up for a lifetime of toxic friendships, or was I mistakenly judging these rowdy books by their covers?
A year later and I still don’t know. All I know is that on the first day of Grade 1, he announced sadly that these particular kids were not in his class … and I was glad.
“I’m not a fan of these kids,” I told him flat-out. “I’ve just never liked the way they treat you.”
“Well, I’m kind of a fan?” he responded slowly.
I sighed. I told him he could certainly be friends with them, even though I’m “not a fan.” I reminded him that he’s free to play with anyone he likes at recess and lunch, but that I hope he plays with friends who are nice to him. We talked — yet again — about how real friends don’t hit or bully.
I know it’s a matter of time before he begs to invite these kids here to play, and I don’t know what I should say. I don’t want to encourage these “friendships,” but on the plus side I’d be able to spot any nastiness and put the fear of God into them.
It’s a tricky situation and I don’t know how to handle it. For the first six years of motherhood, I’ve curated our childrens’ friendships — most just getting them together with the children of my own friends. I know that can’t go on forever, but it also doesn’t mean I’m ready to let our son and daughter run wild with kids who behave badly.
You hear, again and again, about the influence a child’s friends have over them. “Falling in with the wrong crowd” is a real thing, or else I’ve learned nothing from Baby-Sitters Club #87: Stacey and the Bad Girls. Sometimes that plays out as teenagers who sneak liquor into a U4Me concert, but what if — year by year — hanging out with naughty kids slowly turns your child into a troublemaker? Or is mindful parenting enough to keep your child on the straight and narrow even if they hang out with kids who are always getting into trouble?
(For the record, Stacey was appalled at the bad behaviour of her new “friends” and went back to the loyal girls in the BSC. So there’s hope for my boy, right?)
DIY plant shelves for $10
I’m not a plant person in the sense that I’m good at keeping them alive, but I do love the way they look. There’s nothing like a smattering of greenery to make a room look prettier — and cleaner, actually.
So I’ve been slowly, slowly collecting can’t-be-killed-easily plants for my kitchen. I waver between overwatering and underwatering so there have been some brown leaves — and periods of, um, plant sickness? — but things were looking up. I had two cacti, an aloe plant and I think a succulent, all hanging out on the counter around the kitchen sink.
As much as I enjoyed having them there, my OCD was fretting over the counter clutter. I tried moving them to the window ledge but it felt crowded and they obstructed the view. It was starting to feel very Jumanji-esque except without the fun parts, like whooshing down the stairs in a flood.
After some extended begging and pleading, I convinced my handy husband that adding some small shelves around the window was a good idea. No, it would not ruin the resale value. No, it would not be “weird” to have shelves jutting out of the sides of the cabinets. (He is always wary of my suggestions because he does not share my imagination.)
All it took was a single 1 x 6 knotty pine board (less than $10) to cut six lovely little shelves. Two of them ended up being slightly shorter, but I refused to let him go back to the store for more wood to try again. “They’re fine!” I assured him hastily, eager to keep moving forward. “They’ll just go at the top on either side. They’re fine!”
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Continue reading in my weekly DIY column, My Handmade Home …
Fever, hallucinations and sleepwalking kids
This, right here, is the strangest, most annoying sort of plague.
It’s not as terrible as the stomach flu, of course — DEAR GOD, NOTHING IS THAT BAD — but it’s lasting a heck of a lot longer. And the way it comes and goes is very screwy.
It started with a headache on Thursday — the very first day of school. A headache that came on suddenly and had me seeing shimmering things in my vision, which told me it was likely a migrane. I had to skip Zumba and went to bed ridiculously early. Darling Husband was weak and feverish and that should have been a sign of what was coming, but it wasn’t.
Friday and Saturday, I felt off. I went to Zumba (kids and puppy in tow, THAT WAS FUN LET ME TELL YOU) but felt weak and couldn’t really give it my all. We drove into the city for D to attend a birthday party, and I felt exhausted. The kids stayed in the city for a sleepover with my mom, and I numbly drove home.
Saturday evening and most of Sunday passed in a blurry haze of painting lots of furniture and binging Stranger Things on Netflix (which is excellent, BTW). I was tired. I was coughing. I had a fever off and on, I think. I don’t know, I was mostly focused on the show. D’s cough was back, according to Mom, and his appetite was gone.
I slept 10 hours each night, Saturday and Sunday, and still felt exhausted. I was crazy-sick on Monday and had full-out fever hallucinations that night. The puppy was chewing my hair and I thought she was “doing her job” of yanking out doll legs that were tangled inside of it, so it took quite a while for me to realize that, no, she shouldn’t be attacking my hair actually.
I cancelled a city visit on Tuesday because I couldn’t handle 3+ hours of driving. I kept D home from school because he was hacking and feverish and we had all full-out “sick day.” They made jets out of cardboard and crayons. We watched both Batman and Batman Returns because I’d been thinking he might be old enough. He loved them and Charlotte even enjoyed most of them (leaving for the scary parts). No nightmares so far, thank God.
Yesterday (Wednesday) D was full of energy (still coughing, though) and I felt pretty great, other than my own lingering cough. We had a busy day with tons of “firsts” so I was relieved. First morning of volunteering at D’s school breakfast program. C’s first morning of preschool. C’s first ballet class. Everything went fine and I got my work done, and then my body took a nosedive just before dinner.
I slumped down on the living room carpet and realized my whole body was aching, again. My head was hot and my body was freezing. I wrapped myself in a quilt and lay down on the floor for a good 30 minutes before I could drag myself upstairs. Once again, I was in bed for the night at 5:30 p.m. I was so hot that everything I touched felt like ice. Then I thought I was feeling cooler and it turned out I was more feverish than ever.
And that’s when my children decided to spice things up with a little sleepwalking. I tweeted it in a feverish haze because I wasn’t really sure if it was actually happening …
Not sure if it’s a fever hallucination but I just stumbled upon one of my kids asleep on the can with their face mashed against the TP roll.— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) September 14, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
… there was a tiff from the other kid who suddenly (also half-asleep) needed to go …— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) September 14, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
… Then I witnessed the boy child press his hands on the seat, stand far back, and pee in the most leaned-over weirdness I’ve ever seen.— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) September 14, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
Everything is hot and everything I touch is so cold so I’m gonna shlep off into this fever now. I’ll be back if my kids do more weirdness. 🤒— Heather Laura Clarke (@HFXHeather) September 14, 2016
//platform.twitter.com/widgets.js Sooooooooo that brings us to today, Thursday — one week after it all began. I feel good, other than the occassional hacking cough. Normally this would be call for celebration, but this WEIRD ASS FLU is probably going to creep up on me later today.
I don’t trust it. It’s possibly never going to go away. Maybe I should just get used to on-and-off fever and chills. It could be my new thing — the sweaty, shaky look?
DID I MENTION ALL OF THIS IS HAPPENING MERE WEEKS BEFORE WE GET OUR ANNUAL FLU SHOT???
As featured on …
Heather's Handmade Life 