Too Pretty to Use

In the post-Christmas house clean-out I do every year I found a Ziploc bag of stickers from my childhood. Sticker collecting was en vogue in my elementary years, and these fetish properties -- which included unicorns, fuzzy panda bears, and iridescent pink rose buds -- I had deemed too pretty and valuable to use. And now here they were, 25 years later. Their adhesive was gummy, their scratch and sniff smell gone.

Since then, I have slowly been digging through other dark corners of my house and found other ridiculous things that were rotting in their packaging. Like some floating candles that someone gave me for a party favor...nine years ago. It reminded me of a MOPS speaker we had once who had inherited 30-year-old Christmas candles from her mother in law that were "too pretty to burn."

In December, my grandfather passed away at the age of 96, and his loss is taking me a while to process. Part of the process is grieving the loss of our family house: a custom ranch-style in L.A. county that my mom and her five siblings grew up in, and myself, two brothers and 11 cousins spent our birthdays and family holidays at for our entire childhood. When the house sells, it will be like losing our mother ship.

My mom and her siblings have been going through 50 years worth of drawers. So far, along with wonderful sentimental things like my grandmothers' pearls and costume jewelry and gifts my grandfather was given by the patients of his decades-long medical practice, they have also found innumerable pencil stubs, odd golf shoes, Halloween costumes from the 1960s, wooden water skis that haven't been used in 20 years.

And the thing is, my grandparents weren't the type to keep a lot of junk. Their house was actually quite sparse and pristine. Going through the drawers, though, I'm sure my aunts learned some things they didn't know about Grandma and Grandpa.

Maybe it's morbid, but I've been thinking about how my house would speak to someone after I'm gone. If something happened tomorrow, there would be a lot of quilting fabric and thread to go through. But also, bureau drawers full of odd socks I am still thinking might suddenly find their long-lost partner, and kitchen drawers that are lined by a spilled box of toothpicks. In my bathroom are half a dozen old toothbrushes I'm saving for cleaning grout, and I don't even clean my grout.

So, I'm approaching my stuff differently. First of all, I want to pick up those toothpicks. Then get all the dried beans that have spilled in the back of my pantry swept out. Out with the odd socks. Bye-bye old toothbrushes. Gone with the expired medicine. I donated the place mats I got for a wedding gift that no longer match anything I have.

I shall no longer deem anything in this house "too pretty to use." I've been rooting around in my "china cabinet" (which is really just a wooden hutch I bought at a garage sale), pulling out dishes with dust on them, and eating off them.

This week, Livie, two friends and I had a tea party for lunch on my fancy glass punch-and-cake plates that I've had for years but only used once.

I'm using all the "fancy" paper napkins I've saved from past holidays and birthdays of which I only have about four of each kind.

I'm drinking out of the "good" wine glasses. (One of them got broken last week, and I'm not replacing it.)

I don't want to go all Fight Club on you here, but I'm thinking that if I die and there's hardly anything left in my house that would be pretty awesome. If I'm not using it regularly, I'm going to give it away.

Sometimes in this world, weird things happen. I just paused after the above sentence and went to cut my four year old daughter a pear. And as she was waiting she was singing this under her breath:

Jesus said to live,
give and give and give
store up all your treasure
where it lasts forever

This is a song she learned at church this week, based on the Bible verses in Matthew chapter 6:

¹⁹ “Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moths and vermin destroy, and where thieves break in and steal.²⁰ But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moths and vermin do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal.²¹ For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also.

I don't want my heart decaying in a drawer like old stickers. I want to use my pretty things to bless people, give them away when they are needed, and spend less time maintaining these earthly treasures. God give me the conviction to follow through.

My Mom Has an i-Phone

My mother got a new cell phone this week and did not give me the number.

This is more a sign of how busy my mom is and not a comment on our relationship. I don't think.

But the reason I blog about this is not that I feel rejected at being suddenly unable to reach her. I am reeling because my mother now owns an iPhone.

My mother, who once sent me off to college with a second-hand computer she bought me, and didn't include any of the connecting cords. "Cords?" she said, mystified, when I called her. "What cords?"

As far as I know her computer knowledge has not increased a great deal since then, but suddenly, she is at my house searching for Bengal NFL highlights to show me on her phone. She still doesn't actually know how to do this ("What's the difference between google and You Tube?". And now she has a much, much better and more advanced phone than I do.

My phone -- very cute, very small, turquoise (bad for attracting police officers as I recently wrote in "Put Your Hands Where I Can See Them") -- does not have the Internet, or picture mail, or GPS. It has no apps. I can make phone calls on it. I can text. That's it. We were out recently with friends, and told them we needed to get home and bid because our e-bay auction was about to close, and they said, "Just bid from your phone!"

Uh, our phones don't do that.

I'm seeing a bad trend going on. Technology is whooshing past me, and though I felt sort of proud of it for a while down deep in my nouveau bohemian soul, I'm starting to feel a little odd and conflicted.

Hubby's parents both have iPhones too, and iPads. When the kids go to their house, they want to play ipad games. This really bugs me (no offense, Grammy and Grampy). 1) Because grandparents are for teaching kids to do old-fashioned things like play checkers and embroidery (which they do actually do). And 2) I'm looking to our parents to help us raise our kids in a low-tech, slower, simpler lifestyle.

I'm swimming against a colossal current, I know.. But I'm so addicted to my at-home e-mail, I get sucked into facebook, and I'm way more into this blog than any of my reader are, that the last thing I want is e-mail on my phone. Or my kids playing tablet games. I don't want to be totally plugged in (which is an archaic term in the age of wireless technology) every where I go. I really, really hate seeing children playing games on their parents' smart phones in shopping carts or in restaurants (I'm talking three year olds, not teenagers), and I know how judgmental that sounds. But we are raising an entire generation that doesn't know how to be present and is constantly looking at a screen.

So here I am, a voice crying -- or at least whimpering -- in the wilderness, posting to my blog that is sadly lacking in links or cool graphics, knowing that I have lost almost all the battles and certainly will lose the war.

Now I'll go e-mail this post to my mom. She will probably read it on her new iPhone, if she can figure out how. Love you, mommy. Please text me your new number.

Barbie is the Bane of My Existence

Well, my mom was right about another thing: Barbie is bad.

I had a pretty mainstream American childhood, except for one thing: My mom banned Barbie. It wasn't a body image thing. It was because she thought Barbie (The brand? The actual character?) was materialistic. The goal of Barbie play was to amass material wealth: convertible, Dream House, and of course, a killer wardrobe. So, I owned no Barbies. I just went to Kelly Hines' house next door and played with hers. Mostly, we fought over whose doll got to wear the fur coat.

I had none of my mother's resolve on this issue. So Barbie first entered my daughter's life on her fifth birthday, when her best friend bought her a classic blond version wearing p.j.s, along with a canopy bed, a flat screen TV and a laptop.

By Christmas nine months later, the girls had been given at least half a dozen long-legged dolls, plus a Barbie Golden Retriever and three puppies; an above ground swimming pool; a Veterinarian Barbie and with baby animals and medical equipment; a celebrity chef Barbie with a tv-ready kitchen complete with microphone and tv camera; a pediatrician Baribe (who I refer to as the slutty nurse when the kids aren't around. The platforms on that girl! Seriously?); a jeep; two pink scooters; an RV (bought second hand); and more miniature clothes, shoes and handbags than I will own in my lifetime.

Sophia, age 7, has sort of outgrown Barbie (not that she will let Livie play with any of hers) but for Livie the obsession is very much a thing of the present. In May, we bought her a Ken doll in a tuxedo that looks just like Justin Beiber (Livie calls him Justin Beaver). She needed a Ken, she said, because she had lots of Barbies and they all wanted to get married. The reason we gave in is too long to go into.

Here's the problem, okay, problems, with Barbie. First, I do have a body image issue with her. I'm tired of looking at her naked voluptuous bottom and huge bosom lying around on my three year old's floor. It seems kind of obscene or at the very least, inappropriate.

Second, Barbie and her boy-toys are impossible for a child under the age of 7 to dress by herself. So guess who gets to squeeze her into impossibly tight leotards, gowns, bathing suits, stilettos and cowboy boots all day?

And finally, my mom was totally right. Barbie is one materialistic chick. She has way too much stuff: from personal electronics to professional grade cooking equipment. And her stuff is tiny. Like, so tiny that picking it up is like trying to pick sand grains out of shag carpeting. My husband -- half-amused -- has listened to my rants about how impossible it is to keep Barbie organized. I wish they had made all her accessories out of metal so I could just go in there with a giant magnet on a chain like they do at the dump and sift everything out from under my daughters other toys on the floor. I'm sure there's some safety reason why they haven't done that, or I'd make a million dollars on that idea.

Why, after weeks of silence on the blog am I finally coming back to the keyboard to rant about the toy buxom blond? Well, because Hubby, knowing all my feelings about her, came back from a garage sale recently with an 18-gallon tote of Barbie clothes and accessories. Apparently, he was originally going to let the girls pick out a dollar's worth of clothes each from the big bin, but then the lady doing the selling said, "Oh just take it all."

That lady got the upper hand on me, friends. She's basking in a clean Barbie-free house now, and I spent three hours going through that tote, at the bottom of which were 12 more Barbies and two Kens, a grand piano, a living room set, another whole kitchen, and Barbie SCUBA gear. They joy on my daughter's face as we discovered all this treasure I cannot even communicate.

I thought it would be greedy to keep all this, and told the girls so. So they lovingly dressed and accessorized eight dolls to give away to our church, which has a resource center of clothes, toys and household goods for the working poor in our community. I wish I could say my motives were pure. I feel more like I have pawned Barbie off on some other mother than that I have helped bring joy to a child's life. I await the day when Livie has outgrown them, and maybe then Barbie will just have to go live in the landfill. A whole other reason Barbie is bad.

Even My Toys Have Too Many Toys

This may come out sounding harsh, but none of my friends or relatives are ever allowed to buy my kids a stuffed animal again. Ever. I don't care how cute it is. I don't care how cheap it is. I don't care what holiday it's for. I don't care what charity it benefits. I don't even care how small it is.

If it has any of two of the following factors -- a face, artificial fur, bean stuffing, polyfill stuffing, whiskers, soft paws -- and comes into my house, it's out within 24 hours. Got that?

I have just staged a covert operation in my three year old's bedroom while she was distracted by her sister's doll house. Her stuffed animal collection was just reduced by one third. Then I snuck into my seven year old's room (it required less skill to get in there unnoticed, as she is at school), and did the same to hers. I was ruthless. First to go were any animals won at carnivals. Second were any given to them at garage sales by other desperate mothers trying to clean out their toy boxes. And finally, I steeled my heart and bagged just a few more, even if they were given by a beloved relative.

I still have 86 stuffed animals in my house. (Yes, I actually counted.)

What brought on the purge? First, besides the obvious fact that I can't close my kids closets, this morning Sophia had a mild meltdown. She received a new 18-inch doll for her birthday in February, and now is having a moral dilemma over the fact that her old doll has more stuff than the new doll. If she gives some of Eva's things (bean bag chair, laptop, Mary Janes) to Emma, will Eva feel bad? And will Emma feel bad that all her stuff is hand me downs?

I suggested two solutions to Sophia's problem. 1) That Emma get all the things Eva is tired of using, just like we gave Sophia's old stuff to her baby sister. Not good enough, Mommy.

So (2) Can we imagine that they were twins separated at birth and are so glad to now be reunited that they want to share everything equally? "What are you talking about, Mommy?"

At this point, I came up with solution 3, which was to remember that neither of these dolls has a brain and doesn't care anyway, now if you will excuse me, Mommy has to go make breakfast.

Scrambling eggs, I thought, Somewhere in the world there are children working in factories making the toys I will someday buy my children in a dollar bin. And upstairs in my house, my spoiled American daughter is in tears over how to distribute the wealth between inanimate objects. Her dolls own more than most people in this world.

So, change must come to my household. It's not Sophia's fault that she lives in America and has more stuff than she can manage. It's mine. I let it in here. I bought half of it. I meant well. But I must be more discerning. I can't keep buying stuff just to buy it, or because some holiday dictates I do so. In the trash bag hidden in my trunk right now there are also half the stocking stuffers I purchased less than six months ago at the 99-cent Store. And under my bed are still more little trinkets I bought for their Easter baskets. The jump ropes and bubbles can stay; all the other stuff is going back to Michael's.

My kids will always have more than they need, and so will I. That is life in Middle Class America. But, God help me (and I mean this sincerely), I'm not going to have more stuff than I want.

My Stuff Dilemma

Part of the reason Target at Christmastime overwhelms me so much is because I've developed a new relationship to Stuff in the last year. I've become aware that the bulk of my time in my cozy little house is spent cleaning, redistributing and organizing stuff. We have four creatively inclined people between these walls, and so we have a lot of Supplies, from power tools, to Play-Doh accessories, to fabric and thread. We also have two American children with generous extended family, so therefor, we also have Toys. Jeff and I are vintage junkies, so we also have Collectibles. We all wear clothes and eat off dishes. Being aware of how much time and space Stuff Management takes makes me want to have less of it.

Over the past year, I've developed a peculiar attitude toward just about every object that passes through my home which makes the goal of having less more complicated. It used to be that when we weren't using something anymore -- an outgrown piece of clothing, a toy, a book I've read but won't again -- I would simply give it to one of our nieces, donate it to our church, or leave it on the porch for a local women's shelter that collects items for their thrift store.

But since last Christmas, Hubby and I have discovered that almost anything we have and don't want or need anymore can be sold on Craig's List or e-bay. This is lovely news for our budget, and it's thrilling to help make ends meet in this relatively easy way. The down side is that it makes every decision about what to do with our used things much more complicated. I also know that our church, which runs a resource center where local needy families can come and be given or purchase for a low price anything they need, actually has more stuff than they can find homes for -- random collectibles and household items that aren't meeting a need among our community's working poor.

Knowing this, I want to give where it will really help someone, and otherwise I want to sell it and help my family. Our church is very big on teaching the Biblical concept of stewardship: the idea that our blessings are not only for us to enjoy, but to manage well and use to bless others. So throwing things away is almost never an option. I don't like tossing something useful for both spiritual and environmental reasons. (Those of you who read me regularly know we actually rescue things from our trash enclosure and sell them, too.)

I'm beginning to think I've perhaps become a little obsessed with the Stuff Redistribution Dilemma, however. It's not uncommon for an item to sit at the top of my stairs (our house's version of Purgatory) for a week or more until I figure out what to do with it. Would my niece want this lavender terry cloth robe, or is there some little cold child that needs it? Would anyone buy my 1970s Crock Pot, or does that get donated as well -- or is it a fire risk? Is it possible to sell this hiking backpack that Hubby picked up for free at a garage sale (answer is probably yes on this one)? Should I donate this book I thought was kind of depressing, or would it just depress someone else?

So, you can see why Target's shelves upon shelves of home accessories, particularly of the seasonal variety, cause me so much angst. Knowing so much of it will end up in landfills or someone's stairwell purgatory distresses me. Worst of all, it could end up in a garage sale, and odds are, back in my house!

Off Target

The highlight of my 2010 was the four-day camping trip to Big Sur I took with my husband and daughters. For those few days I felt rooted to myself in a way I don't normally feel. Even though I was still cooking, mothering and cleaning, being in that beautiful place among the redwoods made it easier to just be rather than do. It wasn't just being on vacation: it was being outside. It was walking instead of driving. It was not being anywhere near any kind of retail establishment. It was being surrounded by nature with my feet on the ground.

When we came home, we arrived into a flurry of suburban business: my daughter started school, the pantry needed stocking and our camping supplies needed replenishing before they went back up into the attic. Within two days, I found myself shopping in Target three different times, in three different Targets.

On the third visit, I had an existential experience in the main aisle. I suddenly had no idea which Target I was in. I felt like a disembodied head, a lost soul. I could have been in any Target in America. The sensation was startling in contrast to the sense of being rooted I'd had just 48 hours earlier on the bank of the Big Sur river.

Within 10 miles of my house, there are five Targets. It used to be that each one was slightly different: one had a pharmacy, another a larger grocery section. In the last two years, each one has remodeled. Now they are all the same, at least in the sense that they all have the same services, and the shelf heights have all been modified for reasons known only to someone in corporate development. But the layouts are just different enough to completely disorient me. As soon as I get inside I forget where I am. It's like being in a Vegas casino, a labyrinth made up of shiny, desirable objects that distracts me and makes me forget where the exit is.

As a stay-at-home mom, a part of me loves Target. Everything I need under one roof, for cheap. But invariably, I go in, and I leave with something I didn't plan on buying, and without something I really, really needed: like batteries for the smoke detector, or milk, or granola bars. This is partly my own fault. But it is also because of the labyrinthine layout, and illogical distribution of goods that makes me traverse the whole store to get five related items.

For example, if I go in for groceries, I can get juice, bread and Diet Coke in Marketplace, but if I want Cliff Bars, I have to find them somewhere in Health and Beauty, because apparently they are too nutritious to be with regular food. Then while I'm in Health and Beauty buying soap for myself, I can't find soap for my children; I have to go to Baby to find tear-free body wash and shampoo. I do save money on aspirin and toilet bowl cleaner, but somewhere in this journey I end up buying my daughter an outfit she doesn't need and a bag of seasonal candy I really shouldn't eat.

So in a way, though Target seems like the answer to all my problems, over this last year I see it more as a metaphor for what is demoralizing, cyclical and soulless in suburban living. It represents the errands that never get done. The constant struggling to stretch my dollar for essentials, and then the illogical practice of turning around and buying things I don't need. Target represents the myth that I can make a list, check it twice, and finally create order and a sense of completion if I just buy the right things. The pull of this myth is so strong, that my mommy group made a pact that we wouldn't go to Target at the end of our Girl's Nights Out anymore; then one of us broke the pact the next time we got together.

At Christmas time, my existential angst in Target increases. Now added to all the usual things I need and am tempted by are the Christmas version of these same things. Christmas Kleenex. Christmas door mats. Christmas toothbrush holders. Every object in my house, useful or otherwise, could be swapped out for one twelfth of the year and be replaced by something with a snowman on it that was made in China by someone who doesn't celebrate Christmas. My children's dolls can be dressed in Christmas clothes, their teddy bears put in the closet for the month and replaced by polar bears in Santa hats. Half of these things won't be purchased; they'll be 60% off on the day after Christmas. Then half of those will be bought. And then half of those that will be bought will be thrown into the landfill three years from now because lime green and red for Christmas are so 2010. (This is just based on my own estimates, no actual research. But I do a good deal of garage sale shopping and a great deal of the items for sale are seasonal, and have "Target" stamped on their porcelain bottoms.)

So, I'm off Target, boys and girls. Truly, I've got to cut back. My goal for the rest of December is no more than one trip to Target a week. Starting next week. Because though I was just there on Monday, I'm out of Kleenex. I wonder if they have it in red and lime green.