Editor’s note: The author, Brooke McIntosh Crump, is a working mom in Mt. Gilead.
For those of you who know me, you know that homemaking’s not my thing. I like to cook, but when it comes to cleaning … well, let’s just say I require hired help. This week, something came over me (a higher power, maybe?) and I decided that it was time to face my demons. It was time to organize the toy room.
Our toy room is notorious for many reasons. For one, there’s a stripper pole in the middle. Why? Because my son loves to pretend he’s a firefighter. As it turns out, Amazon doesn’t sell ready-made pretend firepoles. But you know what type of poles they do sell? The kind used by scantily-clad dancers, and this is what Santa chose to give my son for Christmas. You can imagine the thoughts running through our mailman’s head during delivery – with the picture featured on the packaging.
Another reason our toy room’s the subject of conversation is it has absolutely zero organization. It’s filled with toys and kids are allowed to run buck wild in there. That’s a source of both pride and shame. So what’s on today’s menu for mom guilt? TOYS.
You might read this and think, how can toys cause anyone guilt? Well, in today’s world of Pinterest and mom-shaming, toys are just one more thing us moms have to overthink. If someone showed up at your house and your kid didn’t have any toys to play with, someone might call DSS. But go to a house where the toy room’s overflowing and, yeah, moms get judged for that, too. Beloved friends and family have mentioned that we need to get rid of some toys. But these same beloved folks have also given my child toys for holidays. In fact, I’ve only purchased a few select toys for our home. My youngest is only 4 and he hasn’t outgrown many of them.
Anyway, back to organizing the toy room. I utilized the Marie Kondo method of dumping all the toys together in a room and worked my way out as I organized the pile. My son discovered old toys that had been buried at the bottom of containers and he had the time of his life while I sorted through the pile. So instead of ridding ourselves of perfectly enjoyable toys, we let them be. All the while, I know I’ll be judged by some for our abundance.
I have no idea how many toys a kid is supposed to own. Obviously, we shouldn’t miss a mortgage payment because we broke the budget on a new toy, but people have so many toys these days that there’s a huge number of blogs and articles discussing how to organize toys and methods for presenting your children with toys. Some suggest putting toys away and rotating them in and out throughout the year. In the world of Ryan’s Toy Review (if you don’t know about it, google it) playing with a crapload of toys is common.
Then there’s this: When our children do acquire a new toy, if we’re being honest, we’re just hoping their new treasure will keep our kids off the iPad. If we’re not careful, we’ll be outed for allowing our children too much screen time. We all know the dangers of too much screen time … which we read about on our own screens. We can never be too careful.
So I spent all this time and energy organizing these toys and it’s unlikely the room will remain tidy for long. In order for me to keep the toys in their newly organized containers, I’ll have to act as a warden over kids as they play. So who did I do all of this for? My son woke up and proclaimed that everything was ruined when he discovered his toys were not scattered about to his preference. Part of me hopes that he’ll be able to find things easier and the room will be less overwhelming. But I also fear that I’ve just sucked all of the fun out of a room that is meant for play.
No matter how hard most of us try, our homes will not look like a picture out of magazine. But for some reason, I can’t stop wishing that for myself, even though that’s not the kind of mom – or person – that I am. As I watched my son play with these toys, I felt guilty for devoting time and energy to yet another first-world problem. I also feel guilty that we live in a home with abundance and that from day-to-day my son is just one small child who has this playroom complete with stripper pole at his fingertips.
Do we have too many toys in our home? Probably so. But the little people in my life love being in our home and if that means I look like a hot mess from the toy excess, then so be it.