BY KRIS BERGGREN
Decluttering after a long, cold, lonely winter improves feng shui, maybe brings in extra cash via garage sale proceeds, or at least generates altruistic pleasure – not to mention a tax write-off – when you donate stuff to charity. In addition to these restorative psychological, material, and spiritual benefits, may I suggest that spring-cleaning may even refresh your outlook on parenting?
We recently reorganized our house, moving two daughters from separate bedrooms into a shared third-floor space with its own bathroom, while the family office space shifted to the second floor. We ruthlessly rid drawers and closets of old school papers, old clothes, and half-finished craft projects. We hauled out bags and bags of trash and dropped off still more bags of thrift store donations. Some clutter, however, demands greater fortitude to rid ourselves of than old homework and hand-me-downs.
The elephant in our midst was the weighty presence of my childhood bedroom set. Mine was the classic, white faux-French provincial 1960s girly bedroom: two twin beds; two dressers, one with a large mirror; a corner desk; and a cupboard and “hutch” of shelves. My parents bought it for me, their only daughter, before my memory – no doubt on layaway, knowing my frugal mother. This carefully chosen ensemble formed my early personal landscape, surrounding me as I played, did my homework, journaled, talked on the phone, giggled with my friends, cried over boys, listened to music, imagined my future – in short, as I grew up. My parents saved it all for me through five moves, finally shipping everything to me when I had a house of my own.
Unfortunately, most of this set of furniture has never really worked for us. The drawers were too small for my daughters’ extensive wardrobes of jeans and T-shirts. (I wore a school uniform, so had fewer things to fit in them.) I could not find handles to match missing originals. And frankly, the big coordinated set didn’t fit the quirky layout of our 100-year-old foursquare home with radiators and tall windows breaking up wall space; most of it sat unused, gathering dust and mildew, in the basement.
So why, until a couple of months ago, couldn’t I simply let it go? To my husband’s periodic, diplomatic attempts to broach the subject I’d irrationally insist: “We can’t get rid of that! My parents bought that for me, and they saved it for me!” Let me be clear: we’re not talking heirloom Spode or Tiffany diamonds. It was an ordinary bedroom set that had definitely depreciated over nearly five decades.
I don’t know what changed this time (can you say, mid-life crisis?), but somehow I realized that this bedroom set symbolized so much more than the sum of its parts. Decent enough but no longer useful to me, I clung to it as needlessly as to some old desire to live up to my parents’ dreams for me – at least the dreams I read into a bunch of furniture. Did they see me as a little princess? A girl aspiring to a pedigree beyond my middle-class, suburban roots? A ballerina? (My mother also selected reproductions of Degas sketches of ballerinas for my walls even though I only took one ballet class as a child.) Frankly, I don’t really know what my parents dreamed for me. What’s important is that I now know it doesn’t matter because, of course, what matters are my dreams for myself.
Though I did still feel a twinge of melancholy when the St. Vincent de Paul thrift store drivers hauled my stuff out the front door one cold January day, I warmed quickly with a sense of peace, even relief about freeing up a lot of space in my basement, not to mention my psyche. More importantly, I began to wonder what kind of emotional baggage I might be collecting for my kids in our daily life. And how can I avoid passing it on to them? I am profoundly reminded that my children are people whose dreams for themselves may not coincide with my dreams for them. And that, no matter how old your children, is perhaps the very core of parenting.
I guess I’ll start with letting my girls paint their new room hot pink and turquoise blue.
And they have inexpensive but functional Ikea furniture that probably won’t last more than a decade or so. That’s just fine with me – and, I hope, with them.
Kris Berggren may be willing to let go of some baggage, but she is actively trying to pass on her bathroom cleaning standards and laundry sorting technique to her children.
