My daughter is a hoarder. That should be read in the tone of a confession, perhaps the title of one of those weird reality/expose type TV shows. I deal with this blight in various ways. For months, I ignore the symptoms, letting items pile higher in an ever building future avalanche on her desk. I pretend not to notice things oozing from drawers. The floor is clean, her clothes are in drawers and I can find her - that is enough. Until it isn't anymore.
About twice a year, sometimes more, we tackle the problem of her room head on and it is always trying for me and heartbreaking for her, inciting wailing and gnashing of teeth. This week was the week of her room. It had to be this week - it was our last chance without Jack who does not particularly enjoy the drama. Tomorrow we will leave for most of the week for a wee bit of vacation. When we come home, we will be home just a few days and then Bell and Jack will be gone for a week while I do some AP work at school and then voila! School starts. (To be read in a unhappy tone, not excited).
Last spring, we worked on getting rid of toys she had outgrown. There are still plenty in there, but they stay neatly tucked away in cupboards that never even get opened so I can ignore those for a while longer. Instead, the focus was only three fold: stuffed animals, desk contents, books.
Yes, I made her get rid of books. There are still counting books on this kid's shelf, this kid who reads chapters of Magic Tree House and Boxcar Children long into the night when she can get away with it. I took every book on her shelf and dumped them into a sprawling pile on her bed. She had to make three piles: keepsake, give away, keep in the shelf. We then winnowed down the keepsake stack some more. It doesn't count as a keepsake just because some woman who met Jack once gave her a book that she has now had for two years and still hasn't read (and is, furthermore, drivel). Comics- repeat. We managed to clear off a third of her shelf. There are still some books she has outgrown, but I can live with a third. She was promised that now we can look at getting some new, more age appropriate books.
The stuffed animals were simpler. I counted the animals and told her she had to pick 20 to keep. Once again, this cleared out a third, not counting the build a bears who do mingle with the masses of common stuffed creatures in the drawer. I think she cheated because that drawer is still too full. I know. "20?" you ask. It is still too many, but these things have to be dealt with in baby steps. We will do it again or while she is gone, I may sneak a few out to the barn. If she doesn't notice their disappearance by winter, they can quietly go away.
The Desk. This is the part I hate the most. She thinks every scrap of paper she ever doodled on is a masterpiece of great import, every pencil nub missing an eraser still great in potential, every sticker from the doctor's office her favorite. Once again, we dumped every drawer on her bed. Three piles: trash, keep, mom's keepsake box. She sorted papers and beaded bracelets and art projects, I ruthlessly sorted through every art supply. I tested every marker and pen, chose the best crayons (no one child needs 4 boxes), cruelly discarded paintbrushes whose bristles were frazzled out.
Breaks had to be taken and snacks procurred. While everything was disassembled, it seemed a good time to rearrange the furniture a bit, give her a bit more room. She worried that she wouldn't ever figure out how how to organize the laundry basket of desk contents that were keep able. That was my job. Once sorting was done, I put everything away in drawers. We even had one drawer empty! Not surprising now that there are two kitchen sized trash bags of desk junk gone.
There was a lot of moaning and groaning throughout the five hour ordeal, but when she finally was admitted into her vacuumed room, with the clean sheeted bed and the tidy desk with the reading lamp that could now be seen, she gasped. I showed her which desk drawer held which treasures - the rock collection, the journal drawer, the art supplies, the play makeup, all the things she feared I had secretly thrown away when she wasn't looking. She apologized for the moaning and assured me that this was sooooo much better. "Mama, I can work at my desk again!" "Mama, I thought I had lost that journal!" "Mama, it looks so BIG in here!"
A lot of the mess came from the last week of school when she brought home all the contents of her nightmarish desk from her classroom. We normally would have dealt with it all then, but the day after school was out, she came down with a horrid a virus and by the time she rejoined the land of the living a week later, I was neck deep in the garden. I bear responsibility in this mess too. More importantly, I understand. I was a hoarder too, every bit as bad as her. My mother used to come help me clean my room like this once or twice a year becuase it would just get out of hand, as Suess says and my mother repeated,
"This mess is too big and too deep and too tall." I remember cleaning my room at her age and being distraught that my makeup bag of prize locust shells had crumbled into brown dust. Disgusting, I know. When I was about ten, I went through a radical shift and became such a neat freak that it drove me nuts to have anything out of alignment, much less truly disorderly.
Maybe it will happen some day to Bella. Until then, there will be motherly interventions scheduled throughout the year.
