Don't Leave Home Without It

Summer camp had ended and it was time to start thinking about going back to school. Aside from still needing to process the paperwork that I’d set aside in June, I decided I’d clean out the backpacks the boys had been lugging to camp every day.

They were obviously carrying some excess baggage: they reminded me of turtles sometimes as they shuffled out to the car, trying to squeeze through the porch door simultaneously. I wondered if one of them tipped over and landed on his back, could he get up?

Typical morning exchanges in our house included the following:

“Where’s my DS?”
“I’m not in charge of your DS, honey.”

 “I can’t get my towel in here!”
“Maybe if you took out some of the other stuff you don’t really need…?”

 “Mommy, can you carry this? It’s way too heavy!” (whine)
“Absolutely not – it’s your backpack.”

 I decided to launder the backpacks in addition to simply emptying them. I dumped their contents on top of the dryer.

 Backpack one included

·        Home made paper money in denominations ranging from one to ten trillion dollars with a few $297s and other unusual amounts in the mix

·        Seven screw-on bottle caps

·        Five toy cars

·        Two blobs of dried up play dough substance

·        A plastic 50-cent piece

·        A “lost” Power Ranger action figure

·        A dead bee in a small plastic container

·        One large rock

 

Backpack two contained

·        A dead grasshopper in a small plastic container

·        Five paper airplanes

·        A scrap of paper with a tic tac toe game on it

·        Three crunched up bookmarks

·        A folded piece of paper with cut out shapes

·        A squished piece of unchewed gum, mostly liberated from its wrapper with sand and leaves stuck to it

·        Two Beyblade tops, all accessories included

·        Empty Yu-Gi-Oh! card holder

·        Cootie catcher

·        Plastic Patriot’s logo tag

·        Feather

·        Assorted plastic piñata trinkets

·        Two Star Wars figurines

·        A toy car

·        Green plastic cockroach

·        Birthday party blower

·        Nintendo D.S.

·        13 plastic monkeys

 This was not even including the stuff that fell off the dryer and went wherever the missing socks go.

“What a couple of packrats!” I tsk-ed to myself. Then realized how frequently I resorted to dumping the contents of my purse out in an effort to get to my phone before it stopped ringing. I decided I’d take stock of my own baggage while the washing machine ran.

I was chagrined to find far too many items that either belonged in the trash (expired coupons, old receipts, five pieces of a broken pen, and orange-colored crumbs), or that I didn’t even need on a regular basis (MBTA passes, a luggage key that probably went to the carry-on briefcase I had last locked in early 2005 and yes, even a pair of winter gloves).

Knowing that the size of the bag determines the amount of stuff one carries around, I scoured my closet to find something more fashionable, i.e., smaller, to replace the diaper-bag sized purse I’d been toting.

And I couldn’t help but wonder how long it will be before our bags runneth over again…