How about I let you in on a secret that will save you so much time: When we take on a tidying, throwing-out project, we cannot—I repeat, cannot—let our children know about it, or, worse, witness it.
You probably already know this, but in case you don’t, you’ve been warned.
The problem, you see, is that when kids notice you’re cleaning out a room, stacking up all those “beloved” stuffed animals they don’t use anymore or clearing out space in their closet for the next year’s clothes or setting all those toys they never play with anymore in the pile labeled “garage sale” (Wait. I don’t do that anymore. I get rid of it.) or throwing away the puzzles missing half their pieces that will, by all accurate estimations, never be found, they freak out. And I mean FREAK OUT.
But then, if you take heed of the danger that is letting kids know you’re on a tidying rampage and keep it a secret operation, the problem then becomes, how is this possible?
Kids are like ninjas, breaking into a locked and barricaded room to look through and dismantle a discard pile you don’t even remember leaving there. They sneak into your bedroom at night while you’re already sleeping, as if they can sense what’s in that trash bag stashed in your closet, and they’ll pull out all those books with missing pages and torn covers. They can slip into a room while you’re looking the other direction and undo your we’re-throwing-all-this-away work in 2.5 seconds, and the whole room will look like a crayon volcano exploded.
It’s impossible to keep kids from seeing and sensing. In fact, I’m convinced they have a sixth sense called “What my parents are throwing away today.”
They can sense when a parent gets a wild hair and convinces herself that she could probably organize this whole room in a morning, while they’re drawing happily at the table (never happens. It’s just wishful thinking.). Kids inherently know when something of theirs is being discussed, even if it’s silently in your own head. They will barge into a room that you were sure you locked behind you, at the least opportune moment, when you’re standing in the middle of the room with that “art piece” they did at the kitchen table without asking to use paper, and they will see the trash bag open and ready in front of your feet, and they will ask you, quite frankly, what you’re doing. And you will either have to lie, or you will have to tell them you’re keeping this forever and ever (and they will remember).
Kids will do everything they can to thwart your discarding efforts.
Even when you think you’ve got it figured out, they will beat you to the winner’s line (disheartening, yes. But at least you’re not the only parent to be beaten by your kids).
This one time we put all kinds of papers in a trash bag, and I cleared out all the old toothbrushes I caught one of the boys using to plunge a toilet with a present in it, and Husband took it directly out to the trash bin in front of the house, where it waited for the trash man to come by first thing in the morning, and when we woke up, those nasty toothbrushes magically reappeared in the cup designated to hold them, waiting for half-asleep children to paint their teeth with sewage.
Another night the 8-year-old was tasked with taking out the trash, and he found the little baby socks that are for a baby younger than three months (his youngest brother was five months old already). He pulled them out, of course, asking, “Why are these here? Why did you throw them away instead of donating them?” The answer is because I know what kind of socks they are. Crappy. They wouldn’t stay on our baby’s feet, and so I didn’t want to give them to any other parents who would feel just as frustrated as I do about socks that don’t work. Then he challenged me to think about how they could be reused. I taped them over his mouth. Perfect.
It doesn’t matter how many locks a door has on it. It doesn’t matter how dark it is inside a room. It doesn’t matter how immediate that trash pick-up is, kids will know.
Trust me. They know everything.
But here are some things you can do, if you can’t possibly keep your discarding project from your kids:
1. When one of your child’s friends comes over, send something you want to discard home with them. It’s like a hostess gift, but in reverse. “Please, take these old socks. You’ll probably throw them in your own trash, because they don’t work at all, but it’s the thought that counts, right?” Encourage your kids to give things away (just not to my kids). Then it’s someone else’s problem. And, bonus, it develops a giving heart in your kid, and gets them used to parting with things they love, like nasty toothbrushes that apparently still really mean a lot to them.
2. Wrap a grandparent’s gift with the art paper that only has one squiggly line on it. That way you can tell your kids you’re just using their works of art to bring joy to another person. You’re not throwing it away. Grandma is.
3. Tell them you will save those tennis shoes they wore in kindergarten with the soles flapping off for their firstborn son, and then, when they have their firstborn son and he asks where those old tennis shoes are (because he’ll remember), pretend there was a fire he never knew about.
4. Wrap a teacher gift with old worksheets. If your kids are anything like mine, they get offended when you try to recycle their school worksheets, even though every day they bring home fifty each (I have three in school. That’s one hundred fifty worksheets every single day). But if you reuse that worksheet to wrap a gift inside, it won’t look cheap. It will look artsy (just consult Pinterest if you don’t believe me). And then it will be on the teacher for throwing away their worksheet. (This isn’t foolproof, of course. If you have a persistently creative child like my 8-year-old, he will come back home with the worksheets, because he wants to “keep them for himself,” which means he wants me to keep them for him. I promise, baby, you’re not going to miss this Reading Comprehension sheet about green toads when you’re 18.)
5. Try to make an art piece out of all those scribble drawings, and massively fail. That’s okay. You can always give it away to a grandparent, who is probably responsible for giving them all those art supplies that are coming out your ears anyway. Pay them back the best way you know how: with paper.
6. Have a stuffed-animal-burying service. For the ones that are looking really bad and aren’t the least bit fixable, dig a hole in the backyard and put them in it (just don’t dig a deep hole, because of what comes later). Have a memorial service, where you talk about what the stuffed animal meant to you. When the kid is sleeping, dig the stuffed animal back up and immediately take it to your friend’s trash bin down the road. They’ll never think to look there (or so we like to tell ourselves). When they try to dig the stuffed animal back up because they “just want to check on him” let them. And then explain about dust to dust and ashes to ashes. It would make a great science lesson on decomposition.
If all else fails, just sell your house and tell your kids you promised the new owners all the toys would come with it. I know it’s not entirely true…or maybe it is. There’s a new revolutionary idea. You’re welcome.
This is an excerpt from The Life-Changing Madness of Tidying Up After Children, the second book in the Crash Test Parents series. To get access to some all-new, never-before-published humor essays in two hilarious Crash Test Parents guides, visit the Crash Test Parents Reader Library page.
(Photo by Ricardo Viana on Unsplash)
