Does Your Kid's Stuff Own You?

I have a vision of my house where there is a place for everything, and everything is in its place. It will have only the items we use. My house will be clean and cleaned out every year and we will rid ourselves of anything we no longer need. There will be no cluttered drawers, closets, corners or rooms.

In reality, my house looks worse than a college dormitory. My son is the main culprit. He has a lot of stuff, not because I let him have everything he wanted. He's twelve and has always lived in this house. We just never cleaned out his toys from when he was younger. We haven't moved or had any reason to clean out his stuff to make room for something or somebody else. We do clean out his closet and dresser every time he grows because we need the space for new clothes. We also have someone to give the used clothes to, so I bring those every time we go for a visit.

I also enjoy certain movies, like "Fight Club". I'll never forget the line where Tyler Durdon says, "The stuff you own ends up owning you". It's a very true statement. I believe I now live that way, and it has got to stop!

Let's get back to my son's toys. Those are the things that own me because it will take countless hours of back-breaking work on my part to get them all sorted, organized, and lots of them ready to sell. He will do a lot of work, but alas, it won't relieve me of the work I will have to do to complete this project.

When he was born we bought a toy box that was about the size of a 33 gallon tote bin. By the time he was 4, his dad and I had divorced and he had a play room separate from his bedroom with lots of tote bins full of toys, some shelves for games, and a TV with a used original Nintendo system. He also had his own VCR because I got sick of "Barney". He didn't keep or play with toys in his room back then. By the time he was 8 I moved his play room to a bigger room upstairs and moved my office downstairs to where his play room was. We moved his TV and all connected accessories to his bedroom.

Today, his bedroom looks like a hurricane hit it. There is enough stuff under the bed to fill at least 4 tote bins. I don't want to speculate on how much of it is trash. It's so full of stuff that he sleeps on the couch because he doesn't want to wade across his room to get to the bed, on which there is more stuff. His play room is so full of stuff that you can't walk across the floor. Since he can't play on the floor in either of those rooms he has spread like a virus to the den, the upstairs hallway, the guest room, and the garage. In the den, the coffee table, one end table, and computer desk are completely covered with things that belong to him. One corner of the den has begun to collect more of his stuff. The upstairs hall goes from clean to full of army men in pitched combat to clean again, only because I will sweep those little things up and throw them out if he doesn't keep the hall clear. The guest room floor was completely covered with Legos, blankets, and towels. He picked the Legos up when I hauled the Shop-Vac up the stairs and told him he had an hour before I started vacuuming. There is one chair and a card table in there on which he has several stacks of Magic: The Gathering cards. Trading cards and Legos are in almost every room of the house.

The garage is the worst part of the whole mess. There are empty soda cans, empty soda twelve-pack boxes, empty chip bags and other food wrappers, empty grocery bags, Styrofoam peanuts, leaves, acorns, dirt, and more Legos all over the floor. I had several items packed neatly in boxes lined up in rows behind the big door so they would be ready when I had everything organized for a garage sale. My son and his friends started playing out there. They had trashed every room in the house except my bedroom, my office, the kitchen and the bathrooms so they had to spread somewhere else. God forbid they should clean one of those rooms up. I went to get the mower out of the garage a few weeks ago and every box I had so neatly packed had been turned over and everything in them was spread all over the floor, mixed with all the trash they so kindly left. Some of those boxes had clothing and house wares in them, so as I wade through and pick things up, I have to wash and dry the clothes and other fabric items before I repack the boxes.

My ex-husband cut a foot-wide swatch around the entire garage about neck high (I'm 5'2"), wired it as a wood shop and never put the drywall back after he finished installing all the new electrical outlets he needed for his tools. Now with easy access, lots of nesting material and probably a lot of food sources, we have a family of rats living in the wall. The exterminator is working on the rat problem. I'm working on the rest of the problem. I would make my son clean the garage, but the rats make that too dangerous. If anyone is bitten by a rat, it will be me. I make a lot of noise, turn on the lights and give them a few minutes to run for cover before I actually go into there. Hopefully they won't be out of their nest while I work. So far, I've completely cleaned about 1/3 of the floor space.

As for the rest of the house, I'm doing what one of my friends does with her kids. She takes a rake and rakes all the stuff on the floor in there rooms into the hall. If it's not picked up in an hour or two, she either throws it away or puts it in boxes to sell. I'm instituting the same practice at our house as soon as I get the garage finished so I have someplace to put the sale items. The garage is also totally off limits for everything but storage.

I'm not sure how the house got this way. I think it had something to do with the countless hours I spent starting my own business and working a part-time job to make ends meet. Mere weeks ago I looked around the house and noticed that all this had come to pass right under my nose. I'm still baffled that I missed it completely, considering my business office is at home. I was never good at spring cleaning because I grew up in a military family and we moved fairly often. Things were always sorted through and cleaned out every time we moved. Until recently, I never got the urge to clean anything out because we weren't moving.

I don't plan on having to move for quite awhile, like after I retire and need a smaller house, so I am instituting an annual spring cleaning ritual, effective immediately. When all rooms are finally clean (to my standards), the rake will be used at least weekly to rid the floor of all items that have taken it over since the last raking. My son will once again sleep and play in his room. I'm even thinking of doing away with the play room and making myself a combination craft room, library and extra guest room. My house will again belong to me, everything will have a place, everything will be in its place, and my son's stuff will no longer own me.