Mama Don't Let Your Babies Grow Up To Be Packrats

Yesterday was a tough one for this sentimental, stubborn Toxic Housewife.  All because it was time to get Mr. C a Big Boy bed.  And that wasn't even what was upsetting me.


Switching from a toddler bed to a twin-sized mattress meant clearing space in Mr. C's room; space that Bee was absolutely convinced could be found only by removing all the toys I'd saved from my childhood.  Naturally, I've saved some large toys, and we've been getting into arguments over these toys for years.

Many of these items are from East Berlin, a fact which I exploited as often as possible: "I can't get rid of that!  That came from a country that doesn't even exist anymore!"  Bee has remained unimpressed.  He has also remained unimpressed by the fact that very few  of these items are plastic, which I had assumed would be a refreshing point in these toys' favor.  Bee just sees these bulky, glued-together items as crap.

Yesterday I asked myself why I don't see them as crap, too.  I asked myself why it was so hard to consider getting rid of these toys that Mr. C didn't play with.  OK, yes: I'm sentimental; but why?  I came to the following conclusions:

1)  I moved around so much as a child that it's important to me to have stability.  The most obvious form of stability in each new place is to surround oneself with familiar objects.  This would explain why -- unlike other students -- I brought everything with me to college: summer dresses I hadn't worn in years (and wouldn't wear at college because I'd be elsewhere for the summer), my entire collection of tapes (despite the fact that cds were now the rage), my library of favorite kids' books (which I never had time to read because I WAS IN COLLEGE), and some really bizarre odds and ends that were totally unnecessary for dorm life.  My two roommates, saints that they are, not only put up with my clutter, but gamely helped me pack everything up and move things to storage facilities at the end of every school year.

2)  Half the reason I must get rid of all these toys is because they are uninteresting to my little boy.  And I will never have a girl.  As much as I love my little man and the rest of the men in my household, the lovers of fart-jokes will always outnumber the lovers of scented candles.  And I must deal with that.

3)  I saved some of these toys for nearly 30 years, always with the vague thought that I was saving them for my kids (see #2).  I realize now that that was just a convenient excuse: I was really saving them for me (see #1).  But now I've been hanging on to everything for 30 years: how can I get rid of any of it now?!

[I suppose that I could come up with another, psychoanalytical reason: letting go of my toys acknowledges that my childhood is over and that I must face adulthood.  However, seeing as how I love being an adult and don't ever want to relive my childhood, Freud can take that theory and shove it up his big ol' psychoanalysis.]

So, having come to all these conclusions, I had to ask myself if I had any right to tell Bee to f*ck off and let me keep my toys.  The answer is, of course, absolutely: if something really means that much to me, I should have every right to keep it.  After all, our house is filled with broken-down crap Bee's saved for years on the premise that it'll be useful one day:

Yes, we NEED this.  Taking up valuable porch space.  Since before I moved in.

But then I realized that that was also part of the reason I was hanging on to things:

4) I still have leftover feelings of resentment that I had to move into his house and felt like I had  to carve out a space for myself within it (see Temporary Sanctuary).  I feel like Bee's always championing for me to get rid of my stuff, but -- meanwhile, his creeps all over the place (see the last 7 pictures on I'm Not Premenopausal; I'm Just A Bitch . . . , or read any of the other past bitchy housewife posts). 

So a huge reason I've been hanging on to these toys is because of my feeling that giving them up is a form of giving in.  As much as I am a big fan of compromise in marriage, I stubbornly am unwilling to compromise on that matter.

So there I was yesterday, angrily throwing things around Mr. C's cluttered room, mad at Bee that he wanted me to get rid of this shit when he was never the one to clean it, anyway: I always clean the kid's room (not that I'm bitter!), along with everything else I clean (again: no bitterness there!).

And I suddenly remembered how good I feel when my life is uncluttered.  And I suddenly realized how --even without Bee's nagging -- these old toys were weighing me down.  And I suddenly realized that all my reasons for keeping them were gone:

1) yes, my childhood was unstable, but my adulthood is great

2) yes, I will never have a girl, but I can snarkily take comfort in the fact that the Big Boy Bed my child wanted most was this one:

3) I might just have inadvertently attached too much sentiment to these items by hanging on to them for so long; if I'd gotten rid of them 30 years ago, I never would have missed them.

4) I am not giving in to Bee by getting rid of them if it would actually make me happier, anyway.

So I've been separating things into piles:

1) a huge pile for craigslist (in the hopes that getting $5 for an item will reduce the sting of its absence)

2) a tiny pile my niece or a friend's daughter might want (it has not been lost on me that their mothers are obstinately refusing to return my calls on the subject)

3) a small pile for the thrift store (in the hopes that the well-loved doll a little girl buys for a dollar will end up being the treasure of her lifetime [and then she'll have to try not to get too emotionally attached in 30 years: good luck, sucker!!])

and

4) just a few small pieces to hide in amongst Mr. C's things. 

Because I'm just not ready to let everything go, yet.