When we moved into our current house, we didn't have children. Our neighbours had young kids, though, and had a lot of crap in their garden. Not just the usual kids toys - slide, sandpit - which I could understand, but things like coloured plastic mixing bowls, colanders, plastic jugs, old pieces of guttering and pipes, buckets, mesh boxes and seemingly hundreds of balls of different shapes and sizes. And cars, trucks, all sorts of plastic vehicles. It was a real eyesore. I looked smugly at our lovely neat garden with newly laid turf, a tidy patio in the corner and our patio furniture arranged parallel to the back door.
Now their kids are older and their garden is neat and tidy and they've passed most of their junk over the fence to us, so it's our garden which is the eyesore - upside-down chairs, trip hazards galore, cars, balls, bowls, kitchen implements, pipes and guttering everywhere. And the mixing bowls are still going strong - one has been used to grow salad leaves this year, and the others are being used for various potions and other concoctions. One has fairies living in it. One fairy has lost an arm and we think was chewed by a squirrel.
I look at the neighbours' garden and it gives me hope for a tidy future! But in the meantime I've resigned myself to the kids being in control of our space. I can vaguely remember a time when there wasn't a heap of junk in every room.