Anyone else dreading Christmas because of THIS

[themadcatparade]

Anyone else dread Christmas with kids because they end up with a load of SHITE on January they haven't got room for?

We have two kids (one each) so naturally they have a set of grandparents each and another home to have Christmas at so they get spoiled. So we have the girls and then they go to my grandparents where Santa has been and then my partners parents for more presents and then their other home. Every Christmas, every birthday, Easter, Halloween, bonfire night etc we end up with a massive pile of crap that we can't find a place for or we need to Chuck things. Sweets, chocolate, plastic shite, every fucking year when we say every year not to spoilt them with too much and it's never adhered to.

I wouldn't mind but we live in a tiny two bed rental with no storage (we were due to move this year to a family home but 'covid') so we are stuck with another year homing gifts from two birthdays and Christmas and Halloween shite and we just can't do it. They will come home Christmas Day with a big bag from my mums and a bin bag from my partners parents because they refuse to keep the stuff they have bought the kids in their tidy homes when we struggle to find places for the stuff we have got them for Christmas. Hence the effort of a massive clear out every year and my stomach drops with how much money in material we have to throw in the tip every year because it's been played with once or not bothered with.

It's my DDs birthday and my mum told me she bought her a sowing machine for some reason and as great as it is that she's encouraging such activities I absolutely lost my shit when she said that I can take home her small dining room table to place the sowing machine on when our house is literally cramped! I sent her a picture of the corner of the living room (where the bloody tree normally goes no idea how we are going to manage that too this year) and there's a large armchair, a large cupboard full of their shoes, two large cardboard boxes of sport stuff we don't have room for, a cabinet we can't decide where to put, a gymnastics mat which keeps marking the wall as we have to cram it behind the armchair, a Henry vac which won't fit in a cupboard and two boxes of books and documents we can't find space for. Do you know what she said?

"It will fit under the window still surely..."

NO!!!

I still have a large LOL house which is just over waist high from last birthday which was bought for them and expected to be kept at ours (I begged them not to buy as it was an 'extra' present) which is blocking the couch and the doorway you have to squeeze past it when you come in the front doorway. We have a cupboard full of sweets and chocolate from over the year which they haven't eaten or else they would be having sweets and chocolate every day (SD's mouth is full of fillings at 7 year old and the reason why we only let them have chocolate and sweets as a treat) and they will still come home with buckets of sweets and crap for Halloween, which is pointless because we are taking them trick or treating and they will come back with loads anyway. I'm literally clearing out bin bags and then the house is filling up again.

I know I sound like a right Scrooge but it literally is every single year this happens even though we warn them not to because it's all expected to come home with us and it's never listened to. I know grandparents want to treat their kids but do so at your own avail and don't expect us to accommodate crap they will not use when we physically can't in the first place. We have our own Christmas shite to deal with.

My DD even got sent home from her dads the other year with a bag full of stuff from his house that he didn't have room for in his three bed new build, it was impolitely declined.

Please tell me I'm not the only one but I'm dreading it this year again. I don't know it it feels worse as in now work from home and I don't have time or energy to sort out all the rubbish and find a place for everything before Christmas just to go through it all over again, but it's my working environment and I can't work when it's so messy and full of junk that other people keep bringing in to our lives 😭😭😭😭

@Lockdownbear

It includes a very expensive piece of technology...for a 4 year old????

I'll assume that will be a tablet that is pretty normal for 4 year olds. Honestly stop being so snooty about it.

The world has changed in the last 2 years and isn't changing back my 4 year old came home from school with 4 different log-ins for various apps and Google Classroom.
I can't wait for Santa to deliver his tablet and free mine from his hands.

So you missed the next sentence?

"It includes a very expensive piece of technology...for a 4 year old????
Money she can't afford but is getting a loan for."

IMO there is nothing 'normal' about buying a tablet for a 4 year-old.

We had that - we've a big family with aunts and uncles on both sides. Now grandparents /each godparent are allowed to buy one present - and something that will fit under the tree. If it doesn't, it gets to live in Granny's /godparent's house (all it took was a big scooter living at hers for my DM to realise how much room toys take up, and she stopped)

Then he gets a santa gift, a stocking and a present from mum and dad - and it's loads!! Every other family within our family on both sides adopted this method as well so it helps.

We lost some family members in the last few years so I impressed on the worst offenders for tat that DS remembers other grandparents not because of gifts, but for the time spent with him. That also helped.

I made a big song and dance about Christmas for us not being materialistic and that I wanted the focus to be on quality time with family, good food, board games, walks, family movies, that sort of thing, and it's great. I spend what we can comfortably afford at Christmas, but very little of it is tat or disposable and it makes me feel a lot better - wastage makes me really guilty!

@MoreThanAnOffDay

We have 4 dcs between us! My dc His dc 2x ours jointly.

Thankfully the older 2s things from their other parent stays there. Although my dc will often bring the crap back from the other gone that they don't want there (dusty old charity shop shite he has no interest in at age 15!)

My parents are seperated so that's 2 separate piles Of gifts x 4.. Dh parents buy a huge pile. Then his GPS.

We have a biggish house and a playroom. But that's running out of space.

One example of what my 3 year old received from GPS on birthday alone

8 ft trampoline, double swing set. 9ft slide. Kids make up. Build a bear. Scooter. Playdoh, puzzles, clothes, books, toy story toys. Toy cars, duplo x 5 sets! Dolls styling head and hairdresser kit.

That was 1 birthday!

They also have a whole selection of toys at dhs parents. And my DF. My dm has a few but rarely go there.

My youngest is in between the age of playing like shape sorters plastic chunky stuff to 'toy cars' type stuff. Altho not 2 until after Xmas. He prefers the older Stuff

Again I clear out every year before Xmas and during the year.
I can't wait until we're past the ' mega blocks' type stage and have smaller Stuff. We have 3 of the trofast large boxes of mega blocks alone. :/

Crikey that’s an insane amount of stuff for a 3 yo. And unfairly competing with parents.

About two years ago, before lock down stuff, I went for a drink in local pub, and the woman serving me, was showing me some photo's off her phone. I remember the date,it was October 1st. The photos were of her living room,with a large Christmas tree up, all lights and baubles etc. All around the tree, there were piles of presents, and I just said Wow, so she said,I counted all the presents last night, and there are 63 presents in all, and that's before any family ones are added. She has two sons, aged about 7 and 9 at the time..

Then she added, that she had already got four more presents wrapped up in her wardrobe, for one of her sons, who's birthday would be in January. !! The mind boggles !

I feel exactly the same OP. But you really shouldn’t be taking once-used toys to the tip where they just end up in landfill. Take them to a charity shop.

Another idea:

Give the kids one small trunk each. All their toys need to fit in that trunk. When they get presents, they have to make room in the trunk - either moving the new toy on or getting rid of an old toy to make space.

See if the local school want pens etc saves them some money

Get the girls to do a still at a local fair and sell their toys - any they don’t play with

Donate to a children’s charity items they don’t want.

Get them involved!

As for grandparents - suggest things they might like to ‘do’ with granny

No gifts, but what about a day at the farm?/theatre etc

I have a clear out of toys twice per year and I bag up the bulkiest/ugliest things and sneak them into MILs house.

@DandyHighwayWoman honestly try and take a bit more understanding of what I've said in the whole thread - I do not 'tip' unwanted gifts. I said I don't have the time to sort stuff out constantly in a house that's full of junk as it is, and I'm frustrated because other people don't listen to us every year regarding spoiling the kids with so much stuff.

I tip stuff that had been opened, pieces lost and that are unusable and it's a LOT of things. Consider the items in that picture I posted - if they are bracelet making and they play for it for five minutes and get bored, rip the packets open and lose half the beads I'm hardly going to donate that am I? Or a doll with pen all over their face and half the clothes missing or torn. What I'm left with is bits of gems, glue, a huge box of half used stuff which they 'promise they will get back to' and it's sat there for ages taking up so much space and I'm having to sort through their stuff constantly to divide stuff, see what's usable, see what needs to go in the charity bags, separate the cardboard on to cardboard recycling, see what else can be put in recycling and see what needs to be chucked.

What full time working modern woman with a full time job and a house to run and kids to look after has time to do that every Christmas, every birthday, every Easter, every Halloween because I certainly don't 😂

It's taken me 5 minutes to gather that stuff in the image together - fine, but the rest of it that they have dipped their toes in to needs a lot of time going in to it and the majority of it is useless to anyone

@Lockdownbear

It includes a very expensive piece of technology...for a 4 year old????

I'll assume that will be a tablet that is pretty normal for 4 year olds. Honestly stop being so snooty about it.

The world has changed in the last 2 years and isn't changing back my 4 year old came home from school with 4 different log-ins for various apps and Google Classroom.
I can't wait for Santa to deliver his tablet and free mine from his hands.

There's no way it's normal for a 4yo to have tablet of their own. And if it's such a needed item, why are you waiting until Christmas to give it to them?

OP, any reason you can't take the mountains of sweets to the food bank donation in the supermarket next time you go?

Anything unopened would be fine

Another easy option is to leave it all out the front of your house one day with a "free!" sign.

Things go very quickly round our way.

Then anything that's left can be donated. Saves hauling it all to the charity shops 👍

And you'll find that people will take the part used things like bracelet kits, because they'll just add the bits to their own sets and chuck the packaging etc.

He's using mine as I can't justify just giving him one, only a couple of months before Christmas.
But Google Classroom has made its way into primary schools and isn't leaving along with the ebooks from ORT.

[quote themadcatparade]@Lockdownbear yes the girls are ones to rip open a present, spend a minute with it, lose bits and move on. They have been quite hard to control before now with so much in front of them.

We have said all year because we are saving hard for a house (and of course because we send money to Santa to help him out) he will not be bringing as much this year so I think they know it's not going to be as plentiful at home. I hope they are decent enough to understand this on the day though. [/quote]
We had that when we moved house when I was a kid. It was explained to us that if we got a house where my Db and I wouldn't have to share a room, and we had a garden, we'd have to do without other things, and not have much at Christmas and birthdays for a few years.
it was a good learning experience. Because it was explained, we saw the sense in it and accepted it- we decided a room to ourselves and a garden to play in all the time was better than a present.

As we were of an age and disposition to understand (8 and 10), we were part of the decision to move, and to choose the house. I was also explained to us what a mortgage was, and how one worked. I was astonished to find in my mid-teens that other kids had no idea about all that stuff. I think it was really useful to be brought into the discussions about it so young- it didn't make us worry, because my parents were careful what they said, but it meant we understood why things would be a bit tight for a while, so we didn't moan about it, and it taught us useful things for later on.

And don't even tell them you're chucking things out. Kids always want the thing you're getting rid if and promise they'll use it etc etc. But if they genuinely have that much stuff,they won't even notice if you got rid.

@BlueMongoose

It's insane that people are lumping you with stuff when they know you have no space. It's especially lousy that they are giving your kids sweets when you have asked them not to. When buying things for kids we ALWAYS ask their parents for a list. We sometimes buy things not on the list, but unless they are little makeweights, we ask the kids' parents first to be sure what we're planning is a good idea and not wrong for their age/capacities. (We also don;t buy anything that makes a noise .)

Why on earth would people not consult parents when buying presents for kids?

It's grandparent mentality I think (not all grandparents of course) but ours especially.

They stay for an hour and they are loaded with sugar or we pop by to say hello and they are given an ice lolly in their hands before they have had their tea it's just what they do. I can't control their actions unfortunately, but I am left to look like the bad guy every time. No you can't have the ice lolly even though nana has just taken the wrapper off, no you can't have large sharing bag of sweets you have just come home with, no you can't bring your Christmas presents home to play with. There is no winning in this situation is there. My mums a buggar for it. My partners mums a buggar for it. It's a hard balance between being too soft and too strict!

We were clear when DC arrived that it is one present max from each set of GPs.

And they have stuck to it.

@Enterthedragons

I feel exactly the same OP. But you really shouldn’t be taking once-used toys to the tip where they just end up in landfill. Take them to a charity shop.

She's isn't dumping them...

i cant bear it either. I have issues with executive function and organising and decluttering, and honestly sometimes it just feels like im being sabotaged when people give gifts for the sake of being generous rather than stuff we can actually use and store

@00100001 this is probably where we have gone wrong with the sweets.

We have a sweet cupboard and anything the come home with gets stored in there until 'treat time' and they can have something occasionally but it gets to the point where we realise we have wayyy too much, maybe we need to be more mindful of that. I gave my mum loads of chocolate from Christmas at the beginning of the year. We are vegan me and my parter so we don't have the kids chocolate and I think because we barely rummage through that cupboard we are a bit blissfully unaware of what we have accumulated. But yes, being more mindful of getting rid of stuff before it's out of date will help. Those poor kids i honestly feel really mean chucking their gifts and treats away not to mention getting rid when they come home with it and it's still in the back of their minds that it's there for them but my own mum made the mistake of letting me have so much junk and sugar and I've had a lifetime of pain and cosmetic work with my teeth - I've vowed to never put our girls through the same. They know they can't have chocolate every day/week and they have access to it at their other parents homes which of course I have no control over, we end up being the stricter ones

I'm dreading Halloween 😩

Being how unreasonable they are filling your home with things you don't have space for, when you have repeatedly told them not to, I would either refuse to bring the stuff home or carry it to their's and leave it there.

lockdown no it's not a tablet.
It is not a child's item at all.
Anyone who gets a loan at Xmas to buy unnecessary and unwanted stuff is a fuckwit

Just take control...

Sort through the existing ones. Tell them, because Hallowe'en is coming up, they can keep X amount of treats (eg enough for 1 per day until the 31st) the rest you will donate to the food bank for other children who don't have any sweets or parents struggle to get them treats etc.

Then ,after Halloween, encourage the girls to donate their Hallowe'en sweets to the food bank
again and/or share them with people. "oh wow, we have 8 mars bars, let's keep 2 each and give the other 4 to food bank" or whatever.

Get them into the habit of giving things away!

Our last TWO christmases were cancelled by the state (before we live in London). Knowing my luck this one will be too.