Out of Chaos an organizing newsletter

Grow Up!

My kids are driving me nuts. They’re leaving stuff all over the place: socks, shoes, Spanish notebooks—and the masks, they leave masks everywhere.

Kids definitely leave a trail of stuff. But in my years of digging deep into my client’s homes, I’ve seen that the bigger problem is that plenty of adult children seem to leave stuff at their parents’ homes indefinitely, even when they’ve become parents themselves. I’m talking about closets full of 40-year-old children’s stuff. Sure, sometimes it’s about space. If you’re living with you spouse and two kids in a tiny apartment in Cobble Hill, then you should definitely leave the sleds in your parents’ garage in Connecticut—especially if that’s where the sledding happens. But sometimes it is a little more psychological. I’ve identified three types:

The Planters: They’ve maintained a foothold in that Classic Six, despite having a duplex in Tribeca. Yeah, downtown is cool and all, but part of them still yearns for a formal dining room. And really, Mom, aren’t you glad he pops in to see you whenever he needs his tux?

The Deferrers: They know they shouldn’t save so many keepsakes from their children’s early life, and deep down they know that they aren’t ever going to look at all those Domino magazines again. But they just can’t part with them, and hey, Mom is just over the bridge—and she has an attic!

The Itinerant-Wanderers: It turns out rolling stones actually acquire more than you’d think. Work takes them to exotic locales, and maybe when they’re stateside they sublet, but they don’t really have a place to store all those brilliant papers they wrote in college, or all the great keepsakes from each far-flung location. So they leave stuff with Mom and Dad.

I get it. Space, especially in Manhattan, is expensive. If our parents have room, what’s the problem?  Maybe Mom is happy to see you when you come drop off your bathing suits and pick up your sweaters.

But maybe your parents want to use that space for something besides a museum of you. Maybe they’re ready to downsize. Maybe it’s time to consider the idea that if you can’t fit all your clothes into your apartment, you have too many clothes. Maybe all that stuff you are saving for your kids is just going to be a burden to them.

I remember a parenting book I read when my older son was a baby (20 years ago!) It said that we make too much of weaning, that it was just the first of many, many separations we would undergo in the process of raising our children. So true.

So, if you’re a parent, feel empowered to ask junior if he really needs those baseball bats that have been in the closet since 1979, and offer to send them to him if he does. And grown-up kids, get your prom dresses and your graduate school research out of your parents’ house. You can do it, and you might even feel freer after you do!