Rachel has the collector gene. I know it. Heather knows it.
These reading glasses broke recently. To avoid her keeping them for an unknown art project to come, I skipped the step that might come a few years down the line and quietly put them in my nearby waste basket.
Yes, you can call me mean, but since she doesn’t read this blog (yet), she won’t hear you. I’m just helping her fight our dreaded collector gene.
Update: check out the comments. Value added — and changed thinking — are reflected there.
Paul, last night while my daughter was asleep, I popped a balloon she’s had lingering around the house for days. I quietly threw it away, just as you did in your story.
This morning as we were eating breakfast, she cried out for her balloon. I felt guilty. Then I proceeded to explain that the balloon went bye-bye outside, and we both waved out the window.
Parenting can be so on-the-fly.
Great story, Johanna!
Parents must be creative to succeed — or sometimes to survive.
From my experience, having parents throw things away that you value doesn’t help you learn to throw things away in the future...it makes you cling more closely to what you have.
And isn’t saving and re-using better than buying something new?
I’m not complaining so much about throwing away broken glasses or old balloons, just about the concept that the “collecting gene” is bad.
You are right, Mark. It’s not bad. I just want to keep it from going unchecked — in myself and in my kids. But it’s up to them to make the choice on what to do with their stuff.
Rachel seems to have a stronger tendency to keep things than Jay or Ben. But thankfully she has shown the willingness to throw things away — on her own.
Thanks for the good corrective to my thinking.
I have a garage and several closets full of accumulated stuff. It’s very, very hard to get rid of stuff, particularly if you’re organizationally challenged. With my background, I can see so much potential in things...
Helping Heather’s parents moving out of their home of 25+ years was a huge wake-up call for me. I’ve been fairly ruthless about not keeping stuff since then.
And yet it’s still hard for me. If you saw the piles on my desk, you’d agree.