Smash & Grab Grab & Stash

The child is a hoarder. To the extreme. This hold-on-tight tendency was probably inherited from her mother, but the trait mutated into something dominant, excessive, obsessive, and compulsive.

Honestly, the girl keeps reminder notes about picture retake day at school- circa October 2009. Used napkins from birthday parties, empty chapstick tubes, finished juice pouches, the Sunday comics from last year, a math page from kindergarten, the 2006 adorable kittens 12-month calendar, the plastic wrapper from last season’s soccer snacks, a pizza box, two coupons for free ice cream cones from Burger Ranch.

Absolutely nothing is unworthy of going into her treasure chest.

Unfortunately, her treasure chest doubles as her bed.

The hoarding characteristic is shared to varying degrees with an older sister or two. And then there’s a younger sister who has not yet learned the art of collecting, but she has certainly mastered rummaging, scattering, pilfering, and mutilating anything in her reach and everything out of it.

Take all these precious keepsakes. Now add in clothing, bedding, shoes, and hair accessories.

And books, magazines, reading logs, multiplication flash cards, and coloring books.

And toothpaste boxes, dental floss, old toothbrushes, pens, pencils, crayons, tissues, and toilet paper rolls.

Do you get where I’m going with this? Ahem, the entire bedroom is a trove of treasures and caboodle of clutter.

Now comes the painful task of organizing, but hoarders are not trustworthy. Because after a deep cleaning, mom later discovers that the piles have only been creatively shuffled. In the bed, under the bed, under the dresser- all are fair game.

And it turns out, pillows can serve a dual purpose. Not only do they provide comfort while sleeping, but their cases are the perfect catchall for notes, sketches, books, rocks, a change of panties, three socks, half a rubber bouncy ball, a plastic dinosaur, and one broken clip-on earring. (Seemingly negating the provision of a comfortable headrest.)

Thus, covert transfer to the trashcan begins. My while-they’re-at-school-and-don’t-know-any-better task of bedroom gutting is underway. I’ve only just begun, but already I’ve got several loads of laundry, a large tote stuffed with trash, and enough books for a mobile children’s library.

Rather than worry that this is a testament of my mothering abilities, I am instead resting in the belief that it is only a natural byproduct of four girls sharing one crowded room.

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