Christmas stuff

On Christmas morning, after the presents are opened, comes one of my favorite parts of the day: getting everything put together and into its new place. Even when we Christmas away from home, there's still that time when the new stuff gets unboxed and worked into the fabric of my house.

I'm the oldest of four, so (of course) I always got the coolest stuff for Christmas and I learned early that the third best way to protect my stuff was to get it put away. The best way to protect everything, of course, was to hide it; the problem with that choice being that if I hid it well enough to keep my siblings out of it, I might not be able to find it again myself. The second best protection was to set a snare around it, but... let's just say that had troubles, too. So instead I took all my new stuff and put it away as soon as I got the chance. As a little bonus, I'd occasionally forget about one of the new put-away things for a few days and then have a little surprise when I noticed it again. But my primary motivation was to keep my stuff safe.

Now that I'm a parent, my priorities have changed a little bit. I still move my new stuff quickly, I just put it on my bed. I'm not quite as worried that my brother'll stop by and fire up my new power tools before I get to try, so my bed is safe enough. Next I set up the new stuff that the kids received. When they were little, that meant removing twist tie after twist tie from the Fischer-Price toys; now it's more likely that I'll be putting battereis into a new toy, or even installing a new game on the computer.

This year, priority one was the new Wii. Everyone wanted to try it out: by setting it up first, I then had a little time to figure out what else needed construction or unpackaging that the kids couldn't handle. Once their new things were all done, then I felt like I could go integrate my new stuff -- clothes, books, etc -- into my house.

What I don't understand, though, is how my very own children -- blood of my blood -- simply did not inherit or learn my strategy of putting new stuff away. Christmas was more than two weeks ago and still... stuff is lying about. It's not like they don't touch each other's stuff. Complaints about "That's mine and it's new!" are frequently heard. (The rule in our house is that you can't touch anyone else's new stuff if they've had it less than a day. The children expanded that rule themselves to include any toy that was missing for a long time and just reappeared.) They're smart enough kids; you'd think they'd come up with a better strategy that simply complaining. To be fair, T is starting to implement the "putting stuff away" plan, but just this year when she's on the verge of age 10.

I've learned by at-times-painful trial-and-error that if I move something to put it away and (1) it's not actually mine and (2) I can't recall where I thought "away" was, then I am responsible for the search that will be required. So I don't move stuff that isn't mine (which is a rule my parents trained me to follow in the first place.) Okay, plus I can be lazy about other people's things. And some part of my brain insists that the owner will learn a lesson if the toy is lost or broken. My hesitation to move the stuff that belongs to others has many reasons.

The problem that comes this time of year is that the new Christmas toys lie scattered around the house and in the next few days the birthdays start arriving. All three of my kids chose to have birthdays in the 40 days that follow Christmas (which I believe is poor planning. I definitely prefer my early Spring birthday. Again, my children didn't follow my example...), so more new things will arrive and want for places to live, too.

This year I finally realized that my strategy for dealing with the growing messiness is to avoid and ignore. I find lots of reasons to be outside the house (despite the weather) and, when I do have to be home, I spend more time than normal in my room or workshop. The problem with this semi-unintentioanl strategy is that I tend to drag the children places "Let's go ice skating!" or "Let's go out to eat tonight!" or "We haven't seen a movie in a while!" or "Weather's great for sledding!" By dragging the kids away so much, I don't really give them the opportunity to get bored with the things in the house and maybe (just maybe) put stuff away. So I'm looking for a better strategy now. Something that keeps them in the house, but less entertained, yet keeps me busy when I'm here.

Oh, maybe I need to find a Wii game I like and demand my turn on the thing.