Stuff, Stuff, and More Stuff

My kids are spoiled. Plain and simple. They have so much stuff they don't know what to do with it. I often go through their rooms and dump bags of stuff into the garbage and they have no clue that anything is missing. I've even hauled bags of stuff to Goodwill unnoticed! A lot of times when I am cleaning, I uncover these long lost treasures and it is new and fresh all over again. With that thought, I am tempted to wrap up some of their hidden Stuff and regift them for Christmas. They won't notice....maybe.

I am a little frustrated with the Stuff right now. My kids seem to see a clean, picked-up room like a freshly cleaned chalkboard....you just gotta write on it. It never takes very long for my kids to go into the freshly cleaned room and dump their stuff all over the floor. Drives me nuts. I was on a cleaning strike there for a while. I just let their rooms go. If they want the mess...then they can live in it. You know.....they don't mind. I guess it is only me who cringes every time that I walk by. It became nearly impossible to cross the floor in the boys' room. How can they live in the chaos???

I finally got a little tough yesterday. I made the kids take about 30 minutes and clean up their rooms. They did a fairly decent job....even though with all the drama one would have thought that I was torturing them. Their rooms were definitely cleaner...but not quite up to Mommy standards...at least we could see the floor. I finished the job today....and currently their rooms look pretty nice.

With all that, I couldn't help but contemplate the Stuff. I've come to hate the toys that come with all these little pieces. I tend to be a little anal about the pieces....and my kids are most definitely not! When we play with them together, I try really hard to keep track of them all so we can play another day. Inevitably, the kids will play with these toys when I am not around to herd all the little pieces back to their respective homes. You would be amazed at the places that I find the marbles from our Trouble Jr. game.... color cards from Candy Land....cherries from Hi Ho Cherry-O. I won't even begin to discuss Legos.

It seems like, when I talk with my friends, they all have at least one child who is anal about their possessions. They become almost obsessed about the care and usage of their toys. They may line them up just so. Or cry when some unauthorized person lays a finger on them. They may even have a melt down if a piece is missing. Heaven forbid. Well, darn it, somehow my house got skipped over by the Neatness Angel. My kids couldn't care less. They still manage to throw a fit here and there if they can't find something....but it never affects them deep enough to change their behavior in order to prevent the loss or damage of said item.

I guess that I need to find the magic Lesson to teach them responsibility about their stuff. I can't even begin to tell you how many times I have talked with them about respecting their possessions. It seems like that discussion is mostly in regards to mine. (My possessions tend to be a little more costly....like a house...van...etc.) Maybe I should start praying that my kids would some how develop a Neatness habit. I would definitely consider that an Act of God if that should ever happen. I may just fall over in a dead faint!

At this point, there is nothing more I can do about it. I will just hope and pray that somewhere along the line my kids will become doers of Mom's word...and not just mere hearers. That is a pretty lofty goal. I guess in the meantime, I will just go lock myself in their rooms, take a moment and soak up the sight of their nice, clean rooms.

A short lived moment, for sure.