This week is a special guest post from my awesome wife and sidekick, Supermom. I came home one day to her special exhausted/rage face and I knew she was cleaning the playroom. She had spent a lot of time stewing over the playroom disaster so we decided that she would take a chance to guest post and share a rant of her own. I’ll have her blogging in no time!

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We have an upstairs “room”. This room was unfinished when we bought the house but as we started to grow we decided to finish it. Because we had three kids at the time Underdaddy and I decided to DIY it. During this DIY decision we didn’t factor in that we didn’t know how to finish the room. After a lot of fussing and cussing and a little help from family we finished it, it wasn’t pretty to say the least but it was functional so we turned it into a play room!

The rules would be:

1. Toys stay upstairs, no toys will travel down to the lower level.

2. You have to keep it clean;

Neither rule is enforced or followed!!

So about every 6 months I put on my mommy panties, grab my broom, garbage bags, and alcohol to tackle the shit storm of toys and god only knows what else. My six month cleaniversary was this past week and after six bags of garbage (not even broken toys, straight up nasty trash! Note: I found actual SHIT!) a pile of trash by the curb, and three giant boxes of giveaway shit, I decided to do a little math.

I know. WTF? Why math?

I had a good reason (mainly I needed a break before I lit a match and just walked away). I calculated just how many toys my children get at just one Christmas. Let me give you some back info before we get into the equations. Every year before Christmas I get the same few texts/emails/calls from grandparents, aunts, and friends “What do the kids want for Christmas?”, “Make a Christmas list for the kids.”, “What are the girls into now?” with the main goal of what can I buy the kids! Every year I get the messages and every year I answer the same way “They don’t really need anything” and “Please only 1 toy per child” (I know this makes me sounds like a total tight ass, because what young kid likes to open clothes/shoes for Christmas but I promise I have a reason beyond wanting to suck the joy out of my kids!). The grandparents always say “ok” but when the day comes there are always more than one toy per child!! The grandparents always say “well I just had to get “it” or I felt bad for not getting them more toys to open!”

I get it, I really do but OMG the amount of “things” in my already small house is taking over my life!

So let’s do the math: (I am only including the normal gifters in the equation)

My children are blessed with,
4 sets of grandparents
3 sets of Aunts/ Uncles
3 sets of Great grandparents
5 sets of Great Aunts/Uncles
3 Other category (could be family friends or school friends)
18 total gift givers X 4 kids = 72 total gifts (that is if each “set” gives only 1 gift)

That is a lot of potential gifts but I couldnt stop there. I broke it down even further because I really didn’t want to get back to cleaning!

Every toy has an average of 5 pieces X 4 kids, so that’s 360 pieces. If you are lucky enough to get a Lego set with 200 pieces X 4 kids, that’s up to 14,400 tiny pieces.

This calculation only includes one gift giving holiday. Birthdays, Easter, and random toy purchases throughout the year aren’t included. Also doesn’t include Santa and our gifts.

I am also going to take a minute to answer the question you have in your head right now (I have social anxiety so I judge myself to see what others are saying about me).

Question: If the room is so nasty in six months why not clean it sooner?

Answer: Six months is usually the time it takes for me to emotionally get over it!

Question: If they have so many toys why don’t you donate to goodwill or RIFA before Christmas.

Answer: The main problem with this idea is that in one month they will have broken a quarter of the toys and by six months they will have broken most of the rest. So the toys aren’t fit to give to anyone after my Godzilla children enjoy their toys. I would be donating toy scraps.

The good news is that with all my cleaning and throwing away we are well prepared for the next holiday and all of the “just one thing” toys that we expect to get. The kids love opening surprises and I don’t want to take that from them but wow it is a lot of stuff.

-Supermom