Parents of young children -- especially parents of lots of young children -- face many existential challenges: molding young souls, forming young minds, guiding young spirits, wiping young bottoms.
So, so many young bottoms.
No matter how much you love your life, you may find yourself, from time to time, muttering or perhaps ("perhaps") shrieking, "Where did all this stuff come from? Why do we have it? Do we really have to live this way?"
Luckily, the answer is a resounding, if slightly hoarse-with-panic, "No!" There is a solution! Here are some tips for dealing.
KEEPING AN ORDERLY HOME
Perhaps the largest challenge of all is just making your daily way through the house. I don't mean "finding your way through the graces and pitfalls of your appointed vocation" or "seeking holiness in cozy terrain of the domestic church." I mean just literally walking all the way from the living room to the bathroom without tripping over a jumbled heap of outrageously useless C-R-double-A-ARGH and breaking your poor suffering neck.
What you do, when faced with an unbearable vista of disorder, is this: Walk normally with one leg, but extend the other one stiffly, without bending the knee, and make a lateral, curving motion with every other step. If it helps, visualize a snow plow. This will make a path. Do this often and vigorously enough, and there will be a BIG path, wide enough for you and your husband to amble through your domicile hand-in-hand, fondly asking each other if you can remember what, exactly, you were thinking when you set yourself up for this kind of life that looks so dang stupid on the outside, but which, deep down, really is that stupid
SORTING AND PRESERVING PRECIOUS CHILDHOOD KEEPSAKES
Most, if not all children, are above average in their artistic gifts; and even more of them are beyond generous when sharing their talent. The upshot of this bounty is that parents become the proud owner of enough beautiful, beautiful, beautiful hand-drawn art to stuff enough mattresses to sleep a small, overtired army. What to do with all this art?
Some of it, you will definitely want to save -- because it's adorable, like the one your six-year-old daughter drew, with the mama and the daddy and the little girl all holding hands with hearts flying out of their heads because they love each other; or because you're afraid it will fall into the wrong hands and someone will arrest you. Like the one where there is an army of butts -- yes, walking butts -- lovingly drawn and loaded to the teeth (or whatever) and on the march to go assassinate their teach-- um, I mean, some children these days are just out of control! Where are their parents!
Well, you obviously want to save some of this stuff. But what about the other 99% of it? You feel like an unfeeling monster for tossing "i lov yuo mama" in the trash along with the stinky diapers and cantaloupe rinds, but what else can you do? There's no way to preserve it all; but how can you bear to say, "This one is precious to me, and I will keep it forever; but this one is nothing?"
Here's the solution: You hold up the sheaf of papers and announce to the kids that these papers are VERY VERY IMPORTANT TO YOU, and that you would be AWFULLY SAD if anything were to HAPPEN to them. Within eleven minutes, they will be saturated with something world-shiftingly foul, and you will have no choice but to stuff them all down in the trash as far as it will go, and then make one of the boys drag it outside quick because it's too cold to open up the windows. No arguments from even the most sentimental corners of your brain. Problem solved.
PROMPT REPAIR AND MAINTENANCE
You want the kids to know they can come to you with your problems, and that you are here to help them, to make things better. If you're a good parent, you will quickly amass a huge collection of things that need fixing -- dollar store snow globes that nobody could ever have anticipated would shatter, or a clutch of Nerf darts with the suction cups gnawed off, which you ardently promised, while you were busy thinking about death, that you would be able to glue back together, because dammit, some things in this world have to be fixable, don't they. You want to fix them. You want to fix them all. But there is not enough Gorilla Glue in the world to put these trinkets back to rights. Also, you can't find the glue.
So do this: promptly and without stint or hesitation, say, "Of course I will fix that for you." Then seal it carefully in a sandwich bag, along with its various shards, bits, or clumps, and put it on top of the refrigerator so it won't get lost. The kid will forget about it within minutes. Problem solved. (Until you shove too much stuff up there and one day, someone opens the freezer hoping there's still some taquitos left over, and down will rain a shower of shame, failure, and deceit. But that will be later, so don't worry about it.)
KEEPING UP WITH LAUNDRY FOR ELEVEN
For some excellent tips on how to deal with the challenge of laundry, see here.
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I love it. I actually think your laundry tips could solve many of my household related problems ;)
Why?
Tell me, is it a cultural thing that EVERY PARENT chooses the top of the fridge for broken knicknacks/confiscated items/important documents? Cause every one i know dose that….
Oh, yes - the “repair” of broken trinkets! And that post-Christmas snow-plow shuffle… Been there, done that! Trouble is, I try to combine both of them to fix my *laundry* problem, too - and I’m here to tell you IT DOESN’T WORK. So you see I am so very glad to hear *your* empowering solution to the everlasting laundry quandary…even though following that link made me laugh so suddenly I pulled a muscle.
My current pile of broken trinkets, while still including a fair amount of cheap jewelry and Star Wars stuff, is mostly Christmas ornaments. Like, a dozen of them. Ugh.
I love this times a bajillion.
I can relate to so very much. I had fun reading it and feel relatively normal. Well done!
I prefer Jim Beam. No; just kidding. [Disclaimer: Ours was a dysfunctional family. Nevertheless one thing to remember. Encourage whatever talents one’s children are perceived to possess].
When I grow up, I want to be Simcha Fisher.
So, I am not the only one who keeps finding Nerf darts with gnawed off suction cups! Feeling vindicated.
I am encouraged—no, spiritually nourished—to know my kids are not the only ones who find nerf darts appetizing.
Thank you for this morning chuckle. I now know how to handle my looming laundry pile this AM. ;)
Whatever, Simcha, you lightweight.
I have books that have been urinated on. Everyone knows they can be salvaged if you remove the most offensive pages.
And if you clear a path, the burglars won’t break their necks at night. You need to develop you mountain-goat leaping skills, which will also come in handy if you find your self in jungle warfare someday.
And, while wine my get some stains out, this is the only solution for the really tough stuff: http://wiki.answers.com/Q/Where_can_you_buy_explosives
HAHAHAHAHA! Love it. Just be sure to avoid inhaling too much gorilla glue while doing the laundry… You might never make it back!—Oh, and in case you and your DH were wondering *what were we thinking???* I would guess it was too much laundry. :-)
Fly Lady…27 Fling Boogie..she’s awesome like Simcha!!!
Our method is to pretend to be all Waldorf and reduce our toy tonnage to an amount we can easily clean. But we only have 2.5 kids, so I know this will not work if we have 9. Even 9 little Waldorfites will accumulate a lot of stuff.
The snowglobe from the dollar store made me laugh. When I was in 3rd-5th grade, my mom homeschooled me. Aldi (Do you guys have this discount grocery wonder out there?) had just opened near us, and next door there was a store where most everything was under $10, most of it a $1. My mom would drop me and my younger sister off to do our Christmas shopping there (or just our regular shopping) while she did the groceries. We were flabbergasted that these “beautiful vases”, “amazing-smelling lotions”, and “awesome toys” were so cheap. Now I can’t believe that the world has changed so much that most parents would never consider leaving their 1st and 3rd grader wandering around a discount mart alone for up to an hour.
MM, maybe it was really a “hansel/gretel” type situation. Ever consider?
I should not be reading this at work… trying to muffle chuckles. :D Simcha, you’re all kinds of awesome!!!
I wanted to share what I do with my little one’s art. Not sure how well it would work with nine kids but with one so far, it’s going okay. :) Whenever my little guy creates a masterpiece, I put it in a special box for the purpose of letting HIM choose a few select pieces when he’s old enough to decide what’s garbage and what’s not. This kind of backfired last week, though, when he saw me do it and then grabbed a bunch of paper, made a few lines or scribbles on each one, and then wanted to put ALL of them in the box…
Meh, I still think it’s an okay idea. :D
Simcha, you are just awesome.
As the parent of three, soon to be four, I have already come to most of these conclusions about how to survive the childhoods of one’s children. Unfortunately, I still feel shame and guilt about it,in large part because my husband has not assimilated the futility of struggle, and hates it when I leave broken dollar store toys in plastic bags to be forgotten about, because it could be fixed! So fix it already! Among other things. I keep waiting for him to realize that the stress isn’t worth it, but it hasn’t happened yet.
My 4 year old is learning to sort her own laundry, fold her socks and put her stuff away in the appropriate drawers. One down, one to go.
OOOOO! That gives me an idea: Since you have a large family, Simcha, you should have a Home Ec. Class featuring a “special” 2-part lesson on how to do laundry! You can have the kids in rows and have older ones partner with younger ones and each one will have his/her own laundry in his/her own basket (or sharing a basket with his/her partner) and practice sorting and separating for the wash: warms, colds, delicates, etc, etc. Then, depending how much laundry needs to be done, the partners can do their laundry according to a posted schedule and wash it together. They can even share with other partners if their own laundry doesn’t fill the washer. Then after it’s dried according to your instructions, you can have a sort, fold and hang session the next day! There, now you have a possible solution to your laundry woes! Try it and tell me how it goes!! :-D
This post will do nothing to allay my growing girl-crush on you, Simcha. I feel like I have found my tribe.
With 8 children I’ve had to severely limit how much artwork I can practically keep, but I’m holding on to a handpainted votive light my youngest son made for me in school for Mother’s Day. The wobbly, 3rd Grade inscription reads: “To One Hot Mama.”
:)
Hahahahahahaha. To the sisterhood of stupid:
Cheers.
From an artwork chucking,
chewed-on-nerf-bullet-sucking,
wine deprived,
grumpy laundress.
(But all of the stupid, can’t be nearly as stupid as the creator of the Universe making a dirt and spit wad eye potion for a blind dude.)
As the mother of very soon to be 6 children ranging in age from unborn to 13, this post made me laugh outloud! So much so, my four year old wanted me to read what I thought was so funny! I just told her it was some serious mommy humor! I actually go through the house at night and “attack” all the broken things by helping them mysteriously disappear into the world unknown AKA the trash can, which I enlist my hubby to quickly dispose of. Thank you for the much needed smile today! And to know we’re not alone!!
@Kathleen,
I had a suspicion there was a hot southern belle lurking under all that well mannered farmer’s wife talk.
Seriously, LOL. Need to share.
Keeping an orderly house: “No one gets dessert until everything is picked up off the living room floor!!” Provide plenty of large baskets and boxes (not laundry baskets since those are all full). One neck-breaking free room is good enough.
Precious Childhood Keepsakes: A paper shredder. Add shredded paper to the compost pile (or chicken coop floor). All guilt is erased as you are being good to the environment.
Repair and Maintenance: “Put it on my dresser until we get some Super Glue” (aka “One-use glue”). Clean off dresser monthly, throwing junk away. It is pre-arranged with husband that he will take the blame, pleading ignorance of items’ value, if any child remembers broken items.
Laundry: Pay eldest (or most mercenary) child to do it.
anna lisa,
:)
Precious Childhood Keepsakes: A paper shredder. Add shredded paper to the compost pile (or chicken coop floor). All guilt is erased as you are being good to the environment.
...or how about papier mache? But then, that might just create more mess and more Precious Childhood Keepsakes. D’oh. My bad.
Ah, the top of the fridge. My only problem with that solution-as elegant as it is—is two-fold. My husband is 6’2”, and can see everything that’s up there. So if he sees something up there that needs fixing, he will either by-God do it, or tell me to leave it there until he gets around to it. Also, he wants the top of the fridge to eventually have our (car) battery backup generator for the fridge should the power go out. Did I mention he’s an engineer?
Hysterical! I especially like your link re tips for laundry. As usual you had me laughing at the computer. Thanks for the laugh, looking at the world today I think we could all use some lighthearted comedy as well as advice.
Kate,
I am totally recruiting my husband to take the blame for throwing away treasures! Classic!
That and my kids just asked me why all their Mother’s Day gifts were in a box. Hmmmm?
You know that men like myself find shouldering the responsibility for wifely command decisions to be the weightiest burden associated with married life. It may not seem like much to you as you stretch to deposit your glad bags atop the refrigerator. But imagine those glad bags aggregated into countless hefties. Pretty soon the weight is overwhelming.
And when you add to it all the “because Daddy said, that’s why…” pretty soon it’s clear to even the littlest ones who’s the heavy around here. But really, Dad is a sensitive, giving, generous soul, who would like nothing better than to take the kiddies out for ice cream/ to the toy shop/ to the nearest Nascar event, etc.
You ladies can make it up to the big guy in an important way, for all the heat he takes for *your* discipline decisions:
Give him the credit he deserves for that occasional trip to the poodle shop, where Fifi is periodically coifed, powdered and shampood. Don’t deprive him on the spurious grounds that spending money on the dog is a shameful waste of hard earned cash. You may not know it, but there’s nothing more salutary for household sanity than a dainty dog.
MattB, you are an endearing and complicated soul. Especially endearing now that I know you, a male, have a weak spot for hands down the best breed on the planet. I am a shameless poodle lover too, (much to the consternation of my testosterone dominated household) and on the verge of breaking down and getting a puppy—standard, and black, whom I have tearfully promised to shampoo and shear myself, like the other half-dozen turfs I’m responsible for.
Please forgive my unabashed display of female machisma.
Wow, we thought we were the only ones in that quandry. In addition to the top of the fridge, we’ve expanded the “to-be-fixed” shelf to include the book cases, table, entertainment center, desk, window sills, and dressers. We use Loctite Super Glue; it works and is not one-use. Great column, again!
ON PRESERVING ART: the smaller stuff can be scanned neatly into your computer, providing eons of delight.
Simcha,
I love your columns, and the reactions of some of your followers. I’ve used the refrigerator top since time immemorial - I used to be 6’2”, and can still see the top. It gets things off the floor. Only problem is that my BW sometimes wants to clean high horizontal surfaces.
BTW, she claims that one reason she married me was because I could reach the upper shelf on her spice cabinet.
We are now down to collecting cute crayon drawings from great-grands. We did throw out some coloring from 40 years or so ago from our youngest daughter. We have some written reflections that she wrote in high school/college - those we’re keeping. She died of cancer in June 2011, and we still miss her.
Keep up the good work!
TeaPot562
Ba ha ha ha! I have three boys under 4 and while it pales in comparison - you just made my day.
My son’s also about 6’2” &,unlike me, can see the top of our icebox.It’s embarrassing when a grown child comes home for Christmas & points out the half inch of grey dust & debris that’s accumulated there since his last visit home.Thinking back, I should have handed him a rag & some Windex while he was handy.Too late now.
This is so wonderful, thank you.
anna lisa, Is “machisma” your typical (understandable) machismo: inverted, reversed, or turned upside down? I know the whole o/a thing in romantic languages: hermana/hermano, muchacha/muchacho, but some masculine meanings don’t really carry over. Are you making this up?
@MattB, of course I’m making it up, but it’s handy eh? My husband, who is Latin (that makes him more qualified than me)coined the term years ago for a couple of worthy recipients. :) It might sound lame to you but we were at a gathering of homeschooling Moms. One of the women began the conversation with a cool, “I cooked a 25 pound turkey for Thanksgiving, how big was yooours? The female “fluffing” and “spraying” (another vulgar term he coined) only went down hill from there. When we got in the car, my husband turned to me and said something like: “That was the most over the top display of machisma I’ve ever endured.” Lol,—maybe you had to be there, but the term has come in handy ever since, when applicable.
I can see you’re from a literary family, anna lisa. Your husband develops all these nifty handles, and you spin them into dreft stories. I can only imagine the hereditary permutations!
Oh my, Simcha, you do make me laugh. I only have two daughters but some days I feel quite overwhelmed with the prolific artwork they produce. A lot goes in the trash (shh!) but plenty of it gets displayed too. I am curious to see whether my son-on-the-way will be this prolific.
I use that same “clear a path” method to get across my boys’ Lego-strewn floor.
Laundry solution hah! Awesome! Our solution for our six is all army: Isolation, distraction and delegation of tasks. Whoever has been tearfully presented with the broken, beloved dollar-store prize is automatically delegated to the consoling role, administers hugs, and packages (or piles) the offending plastic offal on the kitchen cutting board. Once the Aggrieved has been placated (and distracted) the other partner in crime is free to hit a threepointer. Works pretty well unless the same kid gets the garbage chore.
Sure keep a few of your favorites, but simply take a picture of your child with their latest creation! We have a wall in the hall that holds their latest masterpieces….I gather them to stand by it or spread them out on the floor and have them lay in the middle and take their photo. (Later I am able to sneak the items into the trash.) But we focus on creating space on the magnetic white boards for their latest creations!
(mom of 5)
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