The Putting Away of Childish Things... For Now

 

During the first year of the pandemic, back when we were all home all the time, Matt helped the kids do a HUGE clean-out of old toys from their playroom. I about wrung his neck when I saw the size of their donation pile, then hid in the bathroom and sobbed for a dramatically long time, then barely spoke to him for most of a week, and yet of course it had to be done sometime.

Although I don't know why it couldn't wait until after I've died of old age, but whatever. If the guy couldn't stand sharing his work-from-home office space with a billion toys that hadn't been played with in years, then he couldn't stand it, I guess. Or they're all just heartless and have no souls with which to appreciate the precious childhood memories locked into those toys.

ANYWAY!

Souls or not, they knew better than to so much as lay one finger on the things that I've made for the children over the years. Which just means that now, of course, I've got to take those precious memories--I mean stuff, of course it's all just stuff, ahem--off the shelves with my own hands and put it all away somewhere.

I dealt with the kids' play silks first, keeping only the ones that still looked pristine or that the kids had helped me make, washing them and hanging them out to dry and then folding them up and sealing them away in plastic.

Next, Syd helped me deal with the kids' HUGE collection of bean bags. The kids adored bean bags for a ton of years, and every so often I'd make them a new set. Rainbow bean bags. Stenciled bean bags. Halloween bean bags. Bean bags with their art on them.

Again, we kept only the ones that are still perfect and the ones that the kids did the decorating for. That still resulted in quite a stash!

Bean bags don't wash, so I only had to air them out (okay, and photograph them!) one more time before putting them in plastic:

I hope the kids appreciate all the extra room they've now got for their boring teenager stuff, humph! And next we've apparently got to go through their nearly infinite supply of small plastic animals (I'd say we should have bought stock in Schleich, but they're pretty much all secondhand), because who needs an entire wall of toy animals when you're a teenager?

I mean, I probably only have to store them away until both kids move out, and then I can get all of my favorite toys of theirs back out and remodel their room into a shrine to their childhoods...