Wednesday 3 April 2013

Underage Hoarders



One of my children is a hoarder. Pretty sure they mixed her up with another child at birth in the hospital nursery because there is no possible way this child could genetically come from me.

Anything that sits on my kitchen counter for more than 10 minutes is garbage. Seriously, I have thrown away money, cheques, tax and mortgage documents and home warranty papers.
They made my counter look all cluttery and shit.

Except she looks like my clone, so there goes the ‘switched at birth’ theory.

It must be the Stilwell genes. Thanks a lot Dylan. Leaving your socks on the stairs has now been genetically imprinted for future generations. Or it’s from my sister.

Everything is special to her. Every. Damn. Thing. Each surface, shelf, nook, cranny and corner in her room is filled with something ever so special.
My special cotton ball.
My special piece of ripped paper.
My special candy wrapper.
My special Band-Aid.
My special wad of chewed bubble gum.
My special purple button and black thread.
My special broken hair elastic.
My special 2004 wall calendar.

Precious stuffed animals by the thousands. Homemade cardboard cities from third grade. Broken crafts and random shoes. Stacks of paper with one scribble or stick man. Don’t get me wrong, sometimes I can be sentimental, but unless your arts and crafts have your full name and date on them, spelled correctly...they are not worthy.
Not my fault you couldn’t print your name when you were two.

How many Build-a-Bear boxes and Happy Meal toys does one actually need to survive?? And what on earth is the point of Pokemon cards and homemade fortune tellers?

I have become like a Mexican drug lord, smuggling shitty crafts and broken crayons across the border of her room to the local dump. And she has become like a Canadian Customs Official. And Customs Officials are intimidating. They don’t even smile.

Once I made the mistake of placing my purged items in a garbage bin in the laundry room.
She saw it. Cue Armageddon. Needless to say the items were fished out and returned. I was defeated. It was a rookie mistake and this Jedi Knight needed a new strategy.


Now I use black industrial sized garbage bags and ONLY when she is out of the house. I take my lottery of swiped items directly to the trash outside and conceal the bag with coffee grinds. Sometimes I wear a disguise and pretend I have an invisibility cloak or super-sonic-speed power.
I am afraid she will walk through the door mid-mission.

The fault in this plan is that she has a WICKED memory.
“Umm, mom, what happened to my special Sponge Bob sticker that was on my side table two inches to the left of the broken marine blue crayon under my Owl magazine from 2009? You know the one; it’s the issue with the shark feature on page 47?

When I get busted, I panic and I do what any normal good mom would do.
I lie.
I tell her daddy probably moved it. Or she must have misplaced it. Or her sisters took it. Or the dog ate it. Or we can look for it later.
And then pray she doesn’t push the issue.

I have gone dumpster diving for green tissue paper and empty glitter glue bottles at 1:00 in the morning.
I’m not ashamed. Ok..I am a little.

We sat down one day in her room and worked together to make three piles.
1)Keep 2)Trash 3)Donate

The problem was our perceptions of what belonged in each pile didn’t quite correlate. Her ‘Keep’ pile was the only thing with anything in it. After a few hours of bartering like a tourist in a Mexican Flea Market, I realized the emotional trauma that ensued wasn’t good for either of us. I aborted the mission and questioned where I had screwed up in her child rearing and what attachment disorder I should diagnose her with.

The way I see it I have two options. I can continue to poach items out of her room in camouflage by moonlight.  Or I can leave it and continue to pray I will be able to find her each morning amidst the clutter.
Either way…I’m pretty sure her debut on ‘Underage Hoarders’ will be airing any day. I hope they blur out my face and disguise my voice. Like Darth Vader. I would totally sneak in a "Luke I am your father".

I’m glad she is deathly allergic to cats. I consider that a protective factor for her future.


28 comments:

  1. I have the same child, I swear! my answer: close the bedroom door-when she comes to you bleeding, after stepping on a glass that has been buried underneath all the paper, clothing,missing electronics and rolled up pieces of masking tape- THAT is when you say: I TOLD YOU SO!! just like that line from the Christmas Story Movie: You'll shoot out your eye! Until you have to take them to emerge for 22 stitches between the toes and on the bottom of their foot, you are screwed.........drink wine and wait for the wail.....

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Smart! i'm gonna shut the door..but I still know its there….then what?
      Wine..thats what.

      Delete
  2. My 2-year old has all of her crayons, magnet letters, and Little People shoved into the back of her tricycle that she rides around the main floor with. NO ONE is allowed to touch it. Should I be worried??

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    Replies
    1. Maybe a little worried. Practice with a small garbage bag..work your way up.
      J

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  3. LOL ... you've completely predicted what my 6 year old will be in a few years! He has decided that this "special" pair of pajamas that had the crotch ripped out of them (which of course, his "member" dangled out of) are a keepsake! WTF?!?! My kid ... a social worker's kid ... has decided that a pair of penis-peeking-dangle-pants are a keepsake?!?! Oh god, I need more than wine.

    xox
    T

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    Replies
    1. penis-peeking-dangle-pants = me spitting wine.
      xo J

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  4. When my daughter was young, I gave up the battle and closed the bedroom door. My only request was she provide a path to the bed in case the house caught on fire so someone could rescue her.

    Today, she is 31, has come home to live with me, and I still ask she keep the door closed. The clutter drives me bananas, but she does actually clean every month or so (argghh) so it is reasonably clean under the clutter.

    Good luck...hopefully she'll eventually move out and take her precious items with her.

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    1. Oh, trust me…pretty sure she is NEVER moving out. Unless she can take her special bed, dresser and pillow with her.
      J

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  5. As I've said, everything I learned about parenting I learned from my Mom. On bedrooms and mess her advice: "CLOSE THE DOOR" My daughter has improved her cleaning/clutter busting skills since my standard response to any question beginning with "Where's my . . ." is "I don't know."
    Close the door . . . as long as the Health Department doesn't come for a visit, she'll grow out of it. . . or she won't and then she'll move away from home.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. Door closed…check.
      Wine poured….check.
      Browsing rental apartments…..in the process.
      J

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  6. I was a mini-hoarder as a child. The summer I turned 13, my parents sent me to a friend's cottage for a few weeks. When I came back, my room had been given a Laura Ashley- style makeover. Awesome....for 30 seconds....then - panic as I searched for Barbie. She was gone. I liked my new room, but missed "my stuff".

    ReplyDelete
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    1. Oh the panic….I wonder if it's worth the fall out. Sadly at this point it is not:(
      She's super cute though.
      J

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  7. My 2 year old is developing the same disorder. Hoarding is an absolute no no in my house,yet she becomes attatched to wierd broken sponge toys or old erasers, even a hair band becomes her most cherished keep sake. I do what ever other OCD mother does, wait for her to sleep, throw it out and pray she has the memory of a gold fish, if she asks for it, I happily distract her with yet another crappy treasure until she falls asleep again. I dread the day when she out grows the distraction technique, but until then, it's my house and the only clutter allowed is that of empty wine bottles!

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I think empty wine bottles can be interpreted as art. The distraction phase will end..it sucks.
      J

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  8. Where there's life - and wine - there's hope, Jessica.
    Hang in there.

    And yes, my comments are actually useless and lacking any real advice, but Sarah loves to hang onto things too and I have no idea what to do about it...
    So basically, I got nothin'. I mean well, but I suck.

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    Replies
    1. You mean to tell me that this isn't a phase? Wicked….I thought you were here to give me parenting hope oh wise one!!
      J

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  9. I have a 12 year old who has always been a hoarder and is now worse than ever. Recently my husband and I decided to become minimalist (sort of) and moved most of our stuff to a storage unit, over the course of a couple months we decided that we did not need the belongings (our things) that were taken to storage and therefore sold or donated all of them. Problem is our storage is still more than half full and you guessed it... with my 12 year old daughters things, like you I have no idea where she gets it from, but it drives me bonkers and I do the same sneaky tricks in order to force her packratness to stay at a smaller level.
    www.mommysrambles.blogspot.com

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm gonna check out your blog:)
      Hmm…a storage unit……
      J

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  10. Broken plastic outdoor ice-cream thingamagic. I drag it out on garbage day, I find it in the backyard. I drag it out again the next week, I find it in the garage. I do it WHEN THEY ARE IN SCHOOL but that's the day the truck doesn't come when they're in school. She's home at lunch, see it, makes a fuss and brings it back. We got it when she was 2. She is now 5.

    Repeat this with every single thing that finds itself into the house, including (I'm so glad I'm not the only one) wrappers of candy or art for 3 years ago...

    LOL

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I'm sorry…not really. Misery loves company.
      J

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  11. As a mother of 4 daughters, I can say I have seen this and at least with one of them, it does go away. When my 13 was about the age of 10, she was forced to be tidy. I threatened with large black contractor's trash bag in hand, that if she wanted to keep the crap, she had to keep it put up or I was going to load it up and burn it. Now I have to do something similiar with the 9 and 5 year old that share a room. It could prove a little harder.

    BTW I started reading your blog a few weeks ago, and I love it!!! The other night I laughed so hard I tinkled a little and had to run to the restroom.

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    Replies
    1. Sorry about the pee dribble. It happens to the best of us:)
      J

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  12. Started my strike yesterday. Have one 8 year old daughter and husband, been married for 16 years. I CAN'T STAND THE SOUND OF MY OWN VOICE ANYMORE, "take your shoes off, hang up your book bag, bring your plate into the kitchen. Spur of the moment art projects that leave markers all over kitchen floor without top, scissors, scraps of paper. Dad, 3 showers yesterday, one before he went to get fancy coffee, one after throwing ball around with daughter, (he stepped over her book bag to take her out to buy her a lacrosse stick), and one after tennis. The pile of sweaty clothes just keeps growing. Meanwhile he takes ONE TIE to the drycleaner because it had a tiny spot on it. Then announces before he leaves for tennis that he has a friend coming over. I have fibromyalgia and lupus and was not feeling well. I went up and laid down, and he announced that "he had cleaned house". Which meant throwing crap into rooms and shutting drawers. Oops, while he was playing tennis I repotted a huge plant on kitchen island quite a bit of dirt, threw all the dirty laundry over the landing, and locked myself in a guest room. I walked down this am and there was a bowl of cereal sitting in middle of couch...I just took his tennis magazine and taped up all the pages over the glass doors in our kitchen as we are under construction and I don't want the guys staring in at the mess. My painter just came in and told me he should have done this when he was married as his wife totally took him for granted. I left clean silverware from dishwasher on counter on Friday and asked that it be put away, it is still there.

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    1. Are you keeping a journal? Please keep me posted!! You go girl!!!

      Delete
  13. Keep smuggling....baby steps, black industrial garbage bags in another closet until she gets tired of looking for it, then to the dump it goes. I have the same child in a 15 yr old cloned body. Interests change (slowly...very s l o w l y) and just when you think it will never end....there's always wine! :)

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    Replies
    1. Funny…I just tried to dump stuff that was hidden for over a year. She saw one item..memory triggered…dump run fail.
      J

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  14. Jessica

    If your daughter ever marries my 9 year old son they will feature on that awful show about hoarders overtaken by their own crap within one month of being married ....

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  15. We have this problem with our kid - with cuddly toys.

    Now we have a rule - one in, one out.

    Works like a charm.

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