After we got the DVD player, the videos slowly fell out of circulation. They had no special features, no subtitles — and they required rewinding! Some were a bit worn, too — particularly the kids videos. So we were all too happy to make the switch, becoming a DVD household. Natural pack-rat tendencies meant that the videos didn’t get truly tossed — they just got put into a box. Meanwhile, new movie purchases for the past several years — Cars and Monsters Inc. and Batman Begins and whatnot — have been on DVD.
This afternoon, a trip to the garage for an unrelated item left me digging through a few boxes. The kids were there, and a treasure was (re)discovered, amidst excited shouts. The children gleefully excavated video after video — all of which had sat undisturbed for a year and a half in this garage, and more time before that. They excitedly stacked the videos inside, and eagerly came back for more. The enthusiasm was contagious; it was the excitement of locating an undiscovered treasure.
The intrepid explorers are currently enjoying their discovery. They are watching How the Grinch Stole Christmas (a great February movie), and they have already worked out a schedule for the order in which they’re going to watch many of the other videos. Meanwhile, I simply shake my head in amused disbelief.
Sometimes rediscovered treasures are the best kind.
Because of storage issues, I have several (OK . . . more than several) Rubbermaid tubs of toys in the garage. When we pull one out after a few months of hibernation, it is always like Christmas. I think most kids would be happier if 60% of their stuff disappeared for a few months and then re-appeared.
Julie, my mom rotated our toys. About 1/2 of the keepers were in the garage at any one time, waiting for a rainy day or some other occasion to give us something “new.”
This is how I feel about rediscovered clothes that had fallen off the hanger, or books that were pushed to the back of the shelf — the feeling isn’t limited to kids!
In my 40’s, I rediscovered my 30+ year old copy of The Jerusalem Bible. It was the first Bible that I personally owned. What a time-warp it was flipping through it and noting what I had underlined and the margin notes I had made back then. The joy of being reacquainted with an old friend.
We live overseas and can’t take it all with us. Each summer when we return home for vacation, the kids can hardly wait. They have a bedroom with toys, books, and games just waiting for them. Videos, too, are rediscovered and it’s pure joy and excitment. I’m excited about seeing my photo albums, boxes of junk, favorite sweaters, and shelves of books and records waiting for me to go through and devour. It’s great and makes you really appreciate the wait of rediscovering your treasures!
My family tends to lean the other way (obviously : ). We have a loosely enforced policy: If you haven’t worn it, watched it, etc, for one year…it gets donated to Goodwill. Only the most precious items are retained. Works for us. It’s nice to discover a sweater I haven’t worn in a ages, but it’s even nicer to give it away. Accumulating box upon box of old consumer goods doesn’t strike me as particularly Christian.
“Accumulating box upon box of old consumer goods doesn’t strike me as particularly Christian.”
What’s the sin? Preventing others from benefiting from our fickle fashion sense, expanding waistlines and ever higher expectations of the good life?
If consumer goods are a problem, it seems that their storage would be further down the list than their purchase. Ok, so you give your old sweater away, but if it’s good enough to donate, isn’t it good enough to keep and forestall the purchase of an unnecessary replacement?
We noticed how much our 2 year-olds like new toys, so we thought we’d try a rotation system. There are 4 items (or pairs of items) they really like, and we take one at a time out of rotation. Every 2 or 3 days, we rotate it in for another of the big 4. We put the ‘new’ toy in the middle of the living room floor at night, so every day is Christmas! We agreed at the beginning that we wouldn’t lie about the toys, and if they ask for something out of rotation we would get it out…but it hasn’t happened yet, and we’ve been doing this since early January. I’m wondering when they’ll outgorw it.
With four daughters, all of them spaced two or more years apart, we have a lot of rediscovering of clothing in our family. Megan outgrows something–a dress, a pair of sneakers, a t-shirt–and into a plastic tub it goes. A year or three later, Caitlyn needs something to wear, and that old article of clothing fits perfectly. Or maybe we wait even longer; maybe by the time Caitlyn would fit that dress, it’s summertime, and it was a winter dress. So we wait some more, and get it out when Alison is old enough. Even Kristen gets into the act, with toddler clothes coming out that make the girls scurry to the photo albums, to try to remember if they had worn those same overalls at her age. It’s fun; retrieving long forgotten clothing from a plastic tub is, for them, as good as going to the store. (And for us, obviously, it’s even better.)
We have a garage rotation system. First we decide what goes to goodwill. Next we put the balance out in the garage and crack it open from time to time. Its like getting new toys for the kids.
Good times
re: 7 You’re probably right. Guess it’s mostly just liberal, hypocrisy-fueled guilt on my part. I’m basically telling myself it’s OK to be an uber-consumer as long as I give lots of stuff away too.