Leilani has a lot of stuff. To me it’s overwhelming.
I counted 78 T-Shirts in her closet, together with about a dozen on the clothesline, a few folded in a box, and a few strewn across her room that’s about 100. I bought 8 of them over the last 3 years, 2 camp T-shirts, 2 preschool T-Shirts, and 4 school T-shirts. Maybe I am indirectly responsible for the one she got at the Hanalei run, because I signed her up for it.
And I did not push back and tell the givers she has enough and to find a better use for them. When I try to get her to give up some of them I get about 3 to give away and she ends up in tears and I end up stressed. (“This is a souvenir from …” “… gave that to me” “This was …’s T-Shirt and I really like her” “But this comes from Millbrae Nursery School”). Sometimes it’s easier to get her to let me cut it up for the quilt she is trying to make but not always (and there are a lot of prospective quilt pieces around too.)
You would not believe how that closet sometimes looks when she searches for one of them in a hurry, and how long it takes me to hang them up again, arranged by color so she can find them most the time. Or for how long she cries while I force her to pick it up herself.
Shorts, dresses and skirts are just very slightly better and she has more socks than anyone else on Kauai. She could probably go for 3 months without me doing laundry if it was not for a lack of underwear. Oh, and also, after 2 weeks she runs out of stuff she really wears…
On toys it’s just as bad. There is one doll that is being used, but in the doll-box are 3 more, all complete with their clothes and stuff (purses, doll-dressup, diapers, magic wands, hats…). When she looks for that one doll about 100 small pieces come out of that box. I tried putting the unused ones in ziplock bags but periodically a friend takes everything out again.
She solves 300-500 piece puzzles now, and often re-does her 100 piece puzzle. But she does not give up anything that has more than 20 pieces (“The unicorn is so beautiful and I remember how happy I was when I got it.”)
And Barbie. In California everyone had them. Although Andy and I had agreed to disallow them, I caved in early. (“Look, it has wings, it’s fairy Elina not Barbie…”) and we let Leilani have a few fairies and their husbands. And clothes and bicycles and mermaids and horses (by now 3) and a flower-fairy-house and a car and carriages and furniture and now a doll-house.
Some kids don’t play with Barbies, as their moms gave good explanations what is wrong. They dump all the Barbie stuff their well-meaning relatives give them to Leilani and hope she gives them a good home. The other Kauai kids, who just are forbidden (and probably don’t understand what their moms mean by “disturbed body image”) bring their Barbies too and dismember them here, but that’s a different story.
When the huge Barbie box didn’t close anymore a few months ago I forced Leilani to give up 2 of them. After this Birthday we have 3 more again.
With books we are surprisingly organized, even though she has about 1000 (we buy them used). She used to have about 700 3 years ago, but many of them were cardboard books, and they are now gone. The very thin reading-starters are leaving at a good rate too. Everything that leaves the house has been read at least twice. I can find at least the 300 favorites within less than 5 minutes, most of them in a few seconds, but I’m seldom asked, as Leilani finds them herself. She has read (or been read to) 2/3 of the books, and I’m totally fine to keep a few books on nature, animals, geography, planets etc. that are not age appropriate yet. 10-15 of the books come out each day, but at the very least the end up in stacks sorted by language, and often Leilan puts them back in the shelf usually even at the right place.
Almost all of her friends collect the Schleich Bayala fairies and mythical creatures. They can play for hours with the dragons and fairies and dark elves and unicorns … So far they all lived on a shelf, arranged to a scene or at least looking like a theater cast coming out after the play for standing ovations, but after this birthday she has so many that I decided to make her 2 new boxes for them (As a birthday gift :-) At least they are small, pretty, easy to pick up and guilt free… but now with all the wish list accounted for (birthday and Christmas) she will have enough of them too.
She is now willing to give up the dinosaurs, and the matchbox cars, but I’m a bit reluctant, they don’t come out often but if they do it’s usually because a boy is visiting who is not interested in all the girly stuff, and Leilani is very protective about her Legos and Snap Circuits (and rightfully so with all the small parts).
I could go on, but then again… who wants to read it.