If you’re not busy this afternoon, drive on by our house. My son is having a porch sale. It’s a pretend porch sale, so bring your pretend money.
This all started when we got a case of family grumps yesterday after an early dinner. JediBoy and PisecoDad were pushing each other’s buttons again, and PisecoDad got angry and told JediBoy he couldn’t have any screen time for the rest of the day. This sent JediBoy over the Dramatic Edge, moaning and wailing: What can I possibly DO, then? There is nothing at all for me to do, I have nothing to do but just sit until I diiiiiiie.
Okay, for those of you who don’t know us IRL, first of all, we are terrible pack rats. I go to every yard sale and thrift store I possibly can, and we never leave empty handed. I make my poor, suffering husband wash and then save yogurt cups, styrofoam meat trays, egg cartons, plastic silverware, etc. because you never know what you could use this for. Everything has potential. We have books and games piled to the ceiling and toys all over every floor.
Besides all that, I’m a personal believer in the Rich Environment. When I was a kid, my house was the same way: piles, and piles, and boxes, and more piles of stuff. Interesting, unusual, idea-sparking stuff. It was not only educational and stimulating, but absolutely fun. I really think that a full environment can help spark all kinds of interests and discoveries, for adults as well as kids. So I keep my house full of books, art supplies, graph paper, writing paper, easels (yes, more than one, I think we own 4 easels), musical instruments, small pets in their cages, balls, bikes and other sports equipment, Legos, Mega Bloks, Construx, Robotix, K’nex, gears, pulleys, action figures, puppets, globes (I think we weaned ourselves down to 3 globes), electronic toys like the Leapster and Leap Pad, dress-up clothes and hats, action figures, dolls, doll houses, rocks, feathers, magnifying lenses, binoculars, microscopes (okay, I lied, we only have one microscope now), a telescope, things to take apart, things to put together, a time to be born, a time to die.
And the upshot of this - both parts of this, the pack-rattishness and the Rich Environment Syndrome - is that I cannot possibly believe that my son had nothing to do. And for just one instant, I was angry that he would say something like that. But then I channeled that anger, and announced to my boys: This is the perfect time to clean out the basement.
Because, of course, if the living room, office and playroom are bad, the basement is a hundred, a thousand, a million times worse. That’s the place where we put stuff that we’re not really using, but we think we might use one day, far in the future, under just the right, interesting conditions. (The broken toaster JediBoy has already taken apart.) In other words, by spring time (when we usually clean it out) you literally can’t walk through it.
So we cleaned. Oh, we only got a tiny bit done, but I was in a shedding-off mood and I tossed LOTS of stuff into the recycle and freecycle piles. JediBoy was helping by slowly carrying the freecycle things to the front porch. Then he disappeared for a long time, and returned only to ask: How do you make a 5? I directed him to one of our “Count to 100″ posters (we only have 2, give me a break) and he was gone again. Five minutes later. How do you know if something costs two dollars, or two cents? So I tried to draw $ and cent signs in the air, describing them to him.
Some time later, he returned to invite us to his porch sale. He had been making price tags for things - maybe two dozen price tags in all. The prices are, well, interesting. My old purple yoga mat is $106. The old baby basketball set is 5c. There’s a box of books for 26c and a tape player for $25. He had worked very hard at writing the numbers, learning the money signs, and thinking about what good prices would be.
We started playing Porch Sale again as soon as we came home from service this morning. He wanted us to call our neighbors and have them come over to really buy things! So I think we may forgo the freecycle plans and have a small yard sale two weekends from now. Since we’d been planning to donate everything anyway, we can set the prices very low and let JediBoy keep the money.
So if you’re in the neighborhood, stop on by. He’ll make you quite a deal on our old VCR, but the box of Happy Meal toys is going to cost you.
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This sounds suspiciously like our house.
