My "Open Door" Policy

My husband has a thing about "stuff."  He hates it.  He doesn't like things that are without function and he especially hates things that are made just to sit on a shelf.  Every Christmas, my mother complains about this.  But I have grown into it.  There is something to be said for a house that picks up easily, where there is room for everything you have, simply because you don't have that much stuff.

Having a kid, though, seems to fly directly in the face of this.  Kids need a lot of stuff.  The stuff they need is constantly evolving.  When you find cool stuff for your kid, you want to keep it around in case you need it again, like maybe if you have another kid someday.

Much to my husband's chagrin, I'm sure, I decided pretty early on to have an "open door" policy about kid stuff. Meaning, if you have something to get rid of, I will take it off your hands.  I tell most of my friends about this if it ever comes up in conversation.  "Even Barbies?" a good friend of mine asked.  I have a little boy who does not seem like the kind of kid who is going to be into Barbies -- but I said yes anyway.

I'm glad I did.  The Barbies came in a bag with some clothes her own son had outgrown, some books, a child-sized mop and broom, and a red plastic fire fighter hat.  Score!  Maybe if I had turned down the Barbies, we would have gotten all this other stuff anyway, but maybe it was just easier to put everything in a bag together and give it to one person.  She had mentioned she had some clothes, but the broom, the mop, and the hat were all extras.  Extra awesome, if you ask me.

My open door policy doesn't mean I keep everything.  I couldn't.  Our house is already full without taking in spare Barbies that need a home, or jeans with holes in the knees, or the 12-month-old santa suit I found in the back of the closet not too long ago.  I don't know who gave that to us, but someone will think it is awesome, right?

I give away a lot of the extra stuff that doesn't fit with what we need.  I tend to keep the clothes I think we will grow into, and toys that look like they will be a hit (somewhere, I have a playmobile dollhouse that I am only marginally convinced will ever get any action, but I keep hoping).  I belong to a few local mommy listservs and I have a wide circle of friends with kids, so I feel like I can almost always re-home something if I need to.  Right now there are two large boxes of infant clothes in the living room, ready to ship out; and this morning I gave some worn out pants to a crafty friend of mine because she said she likes to convert them into shorts.