Today, Part 2

The next two pictures will take a bit of explaining. My family's Christmas is overwhelming. I have a big family and they all like to give the kids multiple gifts. It's actually not even fun for the kids. It is at first, but by the time they are half way through the pile, you can see they aren't really enjoying it anymore. By the end they have stopped smiling and are reduced to a mechanical, overwhelmed "gotta get through this" opening of gifts. I really wish people would maybe take the time to pick one meaningful gift per kid instead of showering them with so much stuff, each trying to be the star of Christmas, but they'll do what they want to do. Yeah, I'm a bit bitter about it, I'll try not to be too sarcastic here.

As an aside, I'm doing a lot of thinking lately about how all the people in my family seem to have problems with clutter (possibly even some hoarding). I guess that would explain why they feel this need to give my kids so much. Stuff=love and more is . . . . more? I won't go into that now, I'm still trying to figure out my feelings on all this. But yeah, I now see how it plays into Christmas.

Anyway, it was Christmas 2005 when something snapped for me. We came home from the party and dragged everything in the door (two people making multiple trips back and forth to the car). It was like a toystore vomited in our front room. The kids went to play with their favorite toys and the rest of it just sat there in a pile. Keep in mind this was just Christmas Eve (my mom's family). We hadn't even had our family Christmas or dh's mom's Christmas or my Dad's mom's Christmas yet. It was, in a word, overwhelming. So we sat there, tired from the party and exhausted at the idea of having to find space in our house for all this stuff, when I remarked to dh something to the effect of "There's so much they don't even know what they got. If we got rid of half of it they'd never even notice". Can you see the lightbulb going off? So I did it. Not exactly half (less) but I filled two bags with gifts that they hadn't been excited about and put them down in the basement. The Ken doll and his clothing (dd only likes the girls), the trace and draw (we already had one), the chess set (we already had two), the tin of card games (we already had one). Stuff like that.

I told dh that if they asked for anything I'd go get it. A few days later I went to retrieve one toy my son asked for. And that was it. They never asked for another thing.

Today I went down to the basement and got out all the stuff. We'd added to it a bit over the past year and a half. I can't remember if we put in anything last Christmas but I see a few unwanted birthday presents of my son's (see that Superman outfit? He was upset about it because he doesn't like Superman, he likes Spiderman - eh, 4 year olds ;) and a bag of matching tiles they never played with (the red bag). I took it all to the consignment store today. I'm hoping we'll get enough money from it to buy the kids their winter clothes.

Here it all is. The photos overlap a bit.




Meanwhile, we are trying to make some changes in how Christmas is done. For one, as of this year my dh and I will no longer be taking part in the gift exchange at the party. At least that will cut down on the stuff we bring home. I'm also going to encourage my kids to not open all the presents that night. It's just too much. I think it would be much more fun for them to open some (maybe one from each person) and then take the rest home to open in the days after Christmas. I think it will be less overwhelming for them that way.

So that was the big haul of the day, but wait, there's more :)
Also today I got rid of this knife on freecycle. I bought it years ago, I'm not sure why. It looked cool I guess. I'm not into knives and it reminds me of an ex-boyfriend I'm not on friendly terms with so OTD it went!

And then this. It's pretty but it's just too dark for me and I didn't want it anymore. There was a name on the back that we didn't recognize but MIL said she thought a neighbor down the street (no longer living there) had that name (the date next to the name is 1941 - though the grandparents didn't move in here til 1948). This house was dh's grandparents before we bought it and our best guess is that this was done by a neighbor and given to them as a present.

And even more! Really quickly (and sans pictures), there were 11 more books that went out (some back to the people who loaned them to us, some to the church sale) and a glass vase I don't need anymore.

Whew! So today's tally was 37 items. I'm looking forward to tomorrow :)