The Stuff I Bought

While cleaning out Daughter #2’s room it occurred to me that I bought all of this stuff. Every item I am purging has been purchased with hard earned money (mostly my husband’s) and given in good faith to the recipient, thinking that she would want, need, treasure, keep the item forever and ever, amen. Did I really think she would keep her maroon bean bag chair for the rest of her life? On that special day when we searched every shop in town that sold bean bag chairs, looking for just the right one did I think about the day I would donate it to Goodwill? No, I didn’t. When I had her baton bag monogrammed with her name and then hid it in my closet until Christmas (well until after Christmas actually, because she got so many gifts that year I forgot about this one until I came across it several days after Christmas) did I think about the day when she would no longer be interested in twirling batons? No, I didn’t. And the tee shirts, the hundreds of tee shirts, the tee shirts she had to have, the ones with obscure indie/alt/punk bands smeared across the chest that we had to special order from the internet – did I foresee a day when she would cast them aside? No, I didn’t. How many hundreds of dollars could have been spared on tee-shirts alone? What about the boxes of angel-presents she walked away from this week, saying, “I took everything I wanted.” Angel presents are gifts, small trinkets, really, given to my daughters every day of December. A tradition begun when they were young and I could get away with giving holiday pencils, erasers, and candy canes but as they grew older the gifts became more elaborate – bath soap, costume jewelry, socks, journals, picture frames. I really put a lot of thought into buying, wrapping and giving angel presents every year and now there is a box of unwanted “stuff” sitting in the corner of my daughter’s bedroom. If I re-gifted it all this Christmas would she notice?

I’ve got to learn to let go; to get over it. I need to take a cue from my daughter and learn when to get rid of stuff. I guess it is easier for her – she didn’t pay for any of it!