A Cap and Trade Christmas

If you ask my 3 year old daughter, Pixie Pie, what Christmas means the answer will likely be an excited Will-Ferrell-as-Elf-like diatribe about Santa and candy canes and presents and Santa and toys and stockings and candy canes and presents!!!  I  knew this would happen.  "And baby Jesus' birthday!"  I remind her for the hundredth time.  "But where's his cake?" she asks.  Maybe next year, I guess.  For now, it's all about the candy canes.  The candy canes and the presents.  I am not going to deny my children the joy of candy canes and presents so for the past few years, I have not only begun to play the traditional Santa but have witnessed the unexpected birth of a new brand of Santa.  A competitive Santa.  I call him Grand-Santa and his generosity takes Christmas morning to a whole new level.  With his extra-large capacity sack, he has unwittingly stolen the thunder of regular Santa.  I'm talking about my children's grandparents, of the baby-boomer generation, who have indeed raised the bar on Christmas gifts for children.  Because not only do my children wake up in their own home with gifts under the tree purportedly left there during the night while they were sleeping by a jolly old fellow but the same old red suited fat man has left mountains and mountains of wrapped gifts under the trees of both sets of grandparents.  Bonus rounds!

Husband and I remember our childhood Christmases with our own grandparents.  We both come from large, close-knit families.  We would visit our grandparents homes after the morning's emotionally exhausting Santa frenzy with our spoils in tow to entertain us.  All of our cousins would be there.  We would have a dinner with the whole family and our grandparents would ask us if we had behaved in church.  They would hand us envelopes filled with cash--each grandchild receiving exactly the same amount.  Husband's grandmother would not write on the decorative bank envelopes; she would collect them after her grandchildren had pocketed the money and reuse them the next year.  They did the same thing every year.  "Greatest Generation" indeed.

This year was our fourth Christmas as parents.  In anticipation of Grand Santa's arrival, we hinted to our families that our home was simply too small and cluttered to contain another onslaught of Fisher Price toys.  It was becoming polluted, if you will, from years of unregulated regalia.  I secretly considered a Cap and Trade-like approach to controlling the problem.  That is, to provide an incentive for Grand Santa to reduce his emission of kiddie clutter into our home.  There has to be a cap on the amount of toys that a child and his home can handle but no one seems to know where it is; today's parents, many like me who were children of the excessive 80s, have been unable to grasp the concept of enough.  Furthermore, there is no precedent for the amount of stuff had by children today.  At any rate, pollution will eventually ruin us and children can become spoiled and so Grand Santa, one of society's biggest emitters, is going to be required to trade emissions permits from lesser polluters--the poorer would-be Santas--in the form of charitable deeds.  Sounds like a wonderful, market-based solution that will take care of itself.  And it is, after all, in the true spirit of Christmas.  The problem is, come to find out on Christmas Day before announcing my new pinko policy that Grand Santa has already traded enough permits to clutter my home every year until the kids leave for college.  He has given to Toys for Tots, He has purchased secret Grand Santa toys from the Giving Tree, he has written check upon check to various charities at home and abroad, he has donated, he put large bills in the collection at Christmas Eve mass, he has stimulated the economy.  So to comply with my own new law, I have no choice but to top off regular Santa's contribution in the interest of the yet-to-be-determined cap and let Grand Santa run his smokestack.

When Husband and I returned from Grand Santa's home on Christmas, our trunk was bursting full of new toys.  Not only were they busting out of the trunk but they were shoved into the back seat, almost burying the children in their car seats.  Before unloading, we looked around and took stock of our home and all of the current toys cluttering almost every square inch of it.  I suddenly realized that in the four years since we have been parents, we have not given away a single toy.  We are now toy hoarders, I thought.  And why?  Pixie Pie has long since outgrown or ignored for good certain toys and Busy Boy has too or is just not interested.  So what are they doing cluttering our home, infringing on any scrap of adult space left?  I began to think that perhaps the toy pollution is not solely due to Grand Santa's yearly arrival.  Perhaps, some of the responsibility lies on the consumer as it were.  In this case, us the parents.  Apparently, we have been unable to properly dispose of our clutter and are creating a mentally and physically hazardous condition with too many toys vying for the attention of children who still have the attention span of a sand flea.  Something clicked and we were on a mission.  I found a half dozen large cardboard boxes and a roll of big plastic bags.  I asked Pixie to go through her playroom and put any of the toys that she no longer wanted on the couch.  I explained to her that she would not see the toys again and would be giving them up for good.  I reminded her of the episode where Caillou did the same for the neighborhood yard sale.  I expected an ear-splitting, hysterical tantrum and a battle of the wills but there was none.  With an almost Buddhist sense of detachment she set aside more than half of her toys.  I second-guessed her a few times: "Max and Ruby?  I thought you loved them?  And your Fisher Price piggy bank?  You picked that out yourself at the Children's Orchard!"  But she wasn't bothered.  "Out with the old, in with the new!" her actions seemed to say.  I followed suit and continued where she left off, knowing that she would not miss any one of these mostly barely touched toys.  Sometimes we have a lot to learn from our children.  We filled all of the boxes and stacked them in the corner where they currently occupy a six foot square area that reaches the ceiling.  The donation truck is scheduled for Thursday.

So what I learned this Christmas is that those who can afford it, will, but with the lowest negative cost to society we hope.  Today's baby boomer grandparents practically invented social responsibility so it is not surprising that their generosity transcends putting a smile on the precious little faces of their own grandchildren.  Many of them, despite this most current recession, have a disposable income the likes of which their own parents could never have dreamed.  And they intend to use it.  Grand Santa may have bought the show but he can have my credits.  After all, it is our responsibility to put a cap on the toy pollution clutter, once we decide where it is.

Just Clemmy-Clean It

There is a concept which I absolutely adore since I became a mother of two and it is called "accepting a clean enough house."  I first read about it over a year ago in another blog.  The basic idea of this concept is to become comfortable with a less-than-spotless house by lowering your housekeeping standards.  Now that your family has grown, those standards may no longer be realistic.  Shedding your ideal is a very difficult thing to do for most women, though, especially if you grew up in a very strictly clean household like I did and feel there is an expectation for you to maintain a home of the same sparkle.  Or, if you were just always a neat-freak and the increased messiness is now so intolerable (yet unmanageable).  The pressure to have a perfect home is even more devastating if, like me, you can't afford professional cleaning help or worse, if the aforementioned expectation of you includes doing everything yourself as a matter of principle.  If any of this sounds like a predicament familiar to you then I strongly suggest you try and adopt the "clean enough" attitude.  I actually credit it in large part for maintaining my sanity and even making me a happier and more relaxed person.  I have even developed my own version of it which I like to call "Clemmy Clean" after my grandmother, Clem, who was perhaps one of the pioneers of the clean enough mentality.

I speak with Grandma Clem often.  Though she is in her late 80s she seems to remember everything that has ever happened during her lifetime and in great detail.  She can probably recall the price of macaroni from the year 1961 not to mention the specifics of raising her five children.  Lately Clem has been getting a little forgetful in the short term but who cares?  It's that valuable tried-and-true motherly experience that I need her to remember for me.  When Husband and I were first home with Pixie Pie three years ago, I would lament to her my annoyance over the ubiquitous piles of dishes and laundry.  It seemed that they were always on my mind, making it difficult to be present, emotionally, with my newborn daughter.  During our long breastfeeding sessions in the very beginning, I would be almost squirming in my rocking chair over the thought of having to put Pixie down to sleep in her bassinet and then run, immediately, downstairs to scrub the toilet and add the fabric softener.  On days when I was just too tired from having been up all night, I would try to nap while she napped, which is common sense for the new mother, but I just found it too difficult to fall asleep when the rug was just calling out for me to vacuum.

Clem's sage advice to me was to just let everything pile up during the day and clean at night, after the kids go to bed.  Was she serious!?  Could it really be that simple?  And if so, could I live with that pile--would it work?  I couldn't believe that Clemmy had employed such a tactic in her day.  Certainly, such a routine could not have been acceptable to the 1950s housewife.  What if a Francine-from-Mad Men like character had stopped by during the day for coffee with her severely judgmental and negative personality and her almost clinical eye for home perfection?  Well, I didn't ask what the protocol would be for such a situation but deduced that if Clem could pull it off back then there was no reason I couldn't do the same.  Haven't women relaxed their standards for each other even if the internal pressure remains?   Perhaps it's just that self-conscious voice inside your head that needs to be silenced.  But then, what about Husband?   Would he be turned off by the state of things when he returned from work in the evening?  Would it make him anxious or even worried about me?  Nah, I told myself, he just don't notice the state of the house with as discerning an eye as I do.  Nor does he really care as much.  Even Don Draper once told Betty to just leave the dirty dishes in the sink overnight.  So one day, I just started little by little doing just what Clem had advised and I have been working on it ever since.  It was not easy at first.  Sometimes, I literally had to sit on my hands or even just avoid certain areas of the house.  It helped to meditate on the big-picture by reciting a mantra such as "sanity over sanitary, sanity over sanitary...."  Eventually I could feel my standards beginning to compromise.  The degree to which external disorder made me internally crazy began to lessen.  It was replaced with the feeling of being fulfilled on a much deeper level since I could now be more tuned in to my daughter.
Now that I have two children ages 3 years and 10 months, I have hit my stride in terms of Clemmy Cleaning.  During the day, I do the minimum amount of work required to maintain a clean enough house.  This just means that the house is in such a state where it is okay to be messy with chores on deck but does not cross the line into being disgusting or hazardous.  So, for example, the trash needs to be taken out but it is not spilling over and stinking up the kitchen.  I'll just take it out back after they go to bed.  Like a high school janitor.  No need to forgo a nap or interrupt an exciting game of Legos.  Another thing that Clemmy was famous for was the art of spot-cleaning.  No need to wash that pasta collander, just rinse and let dry.  That serrated knife you only used to slice bread?  Just brush off the crumbs and file it back in the wooden block.  This type of thing is the essence of Clemmy cleaning.  Not living in fear of Francine's scrutiny is a secondary benefit.  She may or may not nit pick when she comes to visit my Clemmy Clean home but at least I don't have to let it get to me.  I will be too relaxed from the long baby nap I took during the day and the dramatic game of hide-and-seek I played with my daughter to care.  And I will not, under any circumstances, apologize.  Because when you are an mother at home with small children, whether it's 4 or 24 hours a day, your time is precious.  Before you know it, it will be gone.  So when you are rocking your child to sleep while the furniture around you begs to be polished you can tell yourself not to worry.  I'll enjoy this precious moment because there will be plenty of time later for having a perfect and beautiful home.  In the meantime, I'll just Clemmy Clean it.