Editor’s Note: This is a guest post from Meagan Pilo.
Terrible confession of a mother: Sometimes I inwardly cringe when my kids are invited to a birthday party.
Not because I don’t want them socially included, or the fact they will be juiced up on empty carbs and Red Dye 40 from those scarlet-colored cupcakes. Not even because they will go to some indoor play place or trampoline park where a thousand other kids are sliding in tubes and bouncing on tarps with the same degree of unwashed hands and runny noses.
No, it’s because of the loot bags.
When I was growing up, loot bags were a bag of chips and maybe a small candy bar. Nowadays, they are filled with tiny plastic toys and trinkets and novelty items purchased cheaply at the local Dollar Store. Things that my kids adore and discard with equal velocity. Or they break—instantly. My trash bins are once again filled with plastic, forever in a landfill, just to satisfy a child’s whim for maybe a half hour.
Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of a loot bag. It is fun and engaging and a nice way for the host to thank the juvenile guests for attending their party. I rejoice when I see something useful. One birthday party the girls received nominal gift cards to Indigo (hooray reading!) and another time some hair clips they could actually use.
But more often than not it’s junky stuff that is purchased just because it’s the expected social etiquette of ending a birthday party. Etiquette that creates more clutter. Which stresses me more than a tax audit or missing a flight.
You see, I grew up in a household of clutter.
Long before there were words like minimalism and mindfulness, decades before e-commerce and online shopping and Amazon and Costco and infinite social media scrolling seduced us to buy things we don’t need, I was extremely aware and hypersensitive to “stuff.” Even as a young child I would look around my house and question “What is this? Why do we have it? How does this add value to our lives?”
When another strange knick-knack appeared on a shelf (a shelf I was responsible for cleaning and dusting), I would escape to the river valley near my house and recalibrate my mind watching the water flow over the stones. Nature was perfect, soothing.
I’m not suggesting that everything in my childhood home was junk, or inelegant. In fact, this was the baffling part: my parents actually had good taste—selectively. There were several attractive paintings, fine-boned Rosenthal porcelain, a solid oak dining table, silk curtains.
But scattered amongst these tasteful furnishings and accessories were a collection of scary plastic troll dolls, baskets of artificial plants and flowers (to this day I refuse to have anything but real foliage in my house), enough mismatched table lamps to light an airport runway, endless couch pillows—and things we just accumulated over the years: broken toys, inkless pens, unused cookware, paperwork and receipts, clothes and shoes long outgrown, a life-sized stuffed Smurf. Trinkets and doilies…for some reason my mother had a need to cover every surface—every counter, table top, mantle, corner—with “stuff,” some of it nice and useful but most of it was a combination of rummage sale items and impulse purchases at a local discount store.
Eventually, the tasteful things in our house were so suffocated by this other “stuff” you couldn’t see or appreciate the quality of the things we had that, in Marie Kondo’s words, “sparked joy.” At least for me.
As a teenager, one of my first part-time jobs was working at my father’s condominium sales center showing the model suites to potential buyers. I became enthralled with the beauty and simplicity of the understated, but well-appointed, rooms. Furniture with clean lines, artwork as a focal point, counters devoid of unnecessary appliances and utensils, the mental clarity of having free and unclaimed space. The beds were crisply made with two accent pillows (not twelve), the kitchens were stocked with white dishes that met the minimal of culinary needs.
It was lovely and fresh; I would stroll through each room and an immediate sense of calm flooded my brain. And I was hooked.
This is not to say our personal and domestic space needs to be show-room perfect and sterile, for items that hold character and sentimentality are what make a house a home; but I discovered an aesthetic way of living that aligned with my value system.
Less was more. Less stuff meant less cleaning, shopping, spending, keeping track of where the stuff is, moving stuff, sorting stuff, filing, organizing, and worrying about stuff. When I wasn’t constantly distracted by stuff, I had energy to focus on other, more important issues—like being able to explore nature, my writing, new recipes to cook my family, calling a friend, attending a yoga class.
I became extremely discerning about what items I “allowed” into my home, and cultivated a way to keep my consumer boundaries in check. I tried to shop only when I needed something. I tried to resist trends. I went off social media so I wasn’t sucked up in the comparison culture (which can severely impact mental health even for grown adults).
I say “tried” because, let’s face it—it’s hard. We are bombarded, literally everywhere, by companies and products enticing us to consume. Promises of happiness and fulfillment through fast food chains on every corner, clothing, shoes, toys, games, media, cars—most of it grossly excessive and beyond what we actually need (and can often afford).
As I stand in the long line at H&M buying new socks for my son, I slowly weave past ten bins of stuff that tempt my purchasing power. My mind becomes untethered as I eyeball a pair of cheap gold hoop earrings… wouldn’t they look nice with a black dress? I quickly remind myself I already have several pairs of hoop earrings (and about twelve black dresses) that I never wear. I now silently repeat the mantra I don’t need this whenever I go shopping.
As a mother, instilling this type of will power and values has become increasingly difficult. My children are growing up in a culture and society which has taken consumption and consumerism to disturbing levels which is next to impossible to censor.
We are constantly assaulted (yes, I use this word deliberately) with ads and media outlets which tell us what to value and acquire. And it all leads to buying “stuff.” Wants have replaced needs. We have become a scrolling, disposable community of people that is constantly consuming, comparing, replacing—never satisfied by what we have.
Collections
My eight-year-old daughter loves stuffies, and she has gone through her phases and brands. When she was six it was Squishmallows, at seven it was the sparkly collection of “TYs”, now she is regularly scrolling through YouTube and obsessed with some cat-like animals called Mee Meows—which she doesn’t just covet, she worships.
Her appetite is insatiable; at her last birthday party she barely finished tearing open one gift before moving on to the next. I watched this behavior with a mixture of fascination and moral concern, like observing how fast a herd of lions can devour a zebra carcass. There was little acknowledgment and appreciation for what she had just received—she was already on to the next “stuff.” I could almost see the rush of dopamine in her face.
Recently, she started to complain her bedroom is too small. True, at just around a hundred and twenty square feet it’s not a sprawling space but certainly seemed to have met the building requirements of our 1950s bungalow back in the day.
I gently suggested that perhaps she had too many “things” in her room and that was why it seemed small. She flat out denied this, so we did a count. I told her she likely owned upwards of eighty stuff animals and she looked at me with total shock and disbelief. “No way,” she said, “more like thirty.”
We counted and her smugness started to change to amusement as we approached seventy-five. Final count: eighty-eight. She let it sink in for a moment and then immediately defended her number. “Mom,” she said, “All my friends have more.”
Sigh. How to explain to an eight-year-old, who is living in a privileged neighborhood surrounded by privileged kids and is taught through every social, economic and media channel she comes in contact with, that owning stuff is a measurement of self-worth? That acquiring more, of how much you consume, defines your character, your popularity?
Imagine if billboards and pop-up ads and YouTubers preached the benefits of owning less, of valuing our morals and virtues instead? What if even one of the 300+ channels they are exposed to on basic television educated our kids about how minimalism is good not only for the pocket book, but also for their mind, body and soul? Not to mention the environment.
I always tell my kids (especially after loot bag parties) that everything they buy took something from the earth and it goes back into the earth. In between it made someone a bit richer. Sometimes I think I am getting through—other times I catch myself sounding like a pioneer. My daughter, who has a deep affinity for the environment, is starting to understand. But then the next day, I am once again battling the screens, the ads, the temptations. Someone at school got some new stuff.
Navigating this new world is challenging. On one hand, I have to admit, I kind of get it. I had stuff as a kid, but nowhere near the magnitude that kids have today. I had a few stuffed animals, a barbie doll or two, an Easy Bake oven. But what I loved more than anything was my ten-speed bicycle which was my ticket to freedom and exploration in my northern Canadian neighborhood when I was twelve.
The problem now is the amount of choice and products that are marketed towards consumers—especially kids. A recent trip to Toys R Us to grab a gift for yet another birthday party almost left me so stressed and overstimulated I nearly drove straight to a yoga meditation session. The sheer volume of stuff in the store, row upon row of every kind of toy imaginable, literally made me dizzy, not knowing where to focus my attention.
I watched the attitudes and behaviors of some of the children in the store, flitting from one shiny object to another like moths, demanding they had to have it. And I felt genuinely sad. For the kids, for us, for society, for the earth. I hope in decades to come we can look back and see the senselessness in it all.
My daughter’s ninth birthday is fast approaching. I am starting to think about loot bags. But something surprising happens: as we discuss her party, she looks out our back window at the trees and the place where I regularly feed our resident chipmunk a handful of cashews (wrong, I know). She turns to me and says, “Mom, maybe this year we give everyone a small potted flower.”
I have gotten through. For today at least. Don’t give up.
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Meagan Pilo is a Toronto-based mother, educator, writer, minimalist advocate who loves nature, green tea and her family.