A Blunt Analysis: Arts and Crap

The time had come to organize the closet under the stairs, and the art cabinets. My family has become the default to absorb all our friends' and family's "retail therapy".

An example: Every year, Walmart drops the price of their backpacks to $1 a couple weeks after school starts (they put Back-to-School stuff out in July, so I assume this price drop is to make room for Christmas merchandise). At only $1, that price is too good for all our friends and family to pass up, so they buy several styles and colors. When I say, "We don't really need backpacks, though..." they say, "It was only a dollar. And you never know when one will come in handy!"

So I take them home and put them in the big bag under the stairs, with the ones from last year, and the year before...

The kids treat them as disposable. If they are too lazy to unpack their backpack, they just grab another one from the closet. Weeks and months later, I open up 20 backpacks and sort through dirty clothes, rotted food, and find the missing mp3 player, the retainer, the lost homework, the library book we already paid for in fines...

Expand this idea for marked-down Easter decorations, 'extra' Christmas trees, coloring books, diaper bags (my 'baby' is ten!), craft supplies, beads, fingerpaint, fabric, t-shirts, party supplies, placemats, artificial houseplants, pillow stuffing, plaster, quilt batting... and various "mostly finished" projects that people think I have the copious free time to complete.

"You never know... a long winter night, by the fire, you might need a little project like this latch-hook rug to pass the time. I already got all the black done on it."

Long winter night? By the fire? Do I look like Caroline Ingalls?!

Closet under the stairs, Before

Art table, Before

Along the way, I discovered...

Glitter really is the STD of arts & crafts; it gets on everything, it never goes away, it spreads to everything you touch and it's very hard to get rid of. You can tell everywhere you've been in the room after touching it just once. And everybody has a random, because it's even on my Q-tips and toothbrush.

Anyone who gives a mom with five kids a 5lb bag of beads has no soul.

Pom-poms breed in dark corners. With pipe cleaners. They make baby felt squares.

It was suggested that I have a give-away table at my next social event. It's risky. Folks might recognize their stuff. They'd be all, "Hey! You can't give this away! I dumped this crap on you out of the kindness of my heart!"

So, for now I'm sorting into piles, and burying stuff deep when no one is looking.