We may be in the midst of a recession, but Americans still know how to accumulate a whole lot of stuff. If you've spent the past couple of days staring goggle-eyed at the mountains of toys under and around your Christmas tree, you surely will relate to Kevin Keck's Babble essay, in which he bemoans the endless number of playthings his children have amassed. 
Being a forward-thinking father, Kevin tried to attack the problem by conducting a little experiment. After his son's fifth birthday -- a day when people showed up bearing more gifts than the kid could possibly ever need -- Kevin packed up all the presents and put them in storage. He says his boy never missed them. So over the years Kevin continued to place many of the toys his children received into storage. Consequently, he now has a palace of unused (dare I say misfit?) toys, a tribute to the generosity and, let's be honest, consumer-crazed tendencies of his friends and relatives.
I applaud Kevin's actions. And the reason I applaud them is that I know I could never do the same thing. You see, I come from a long line of hoarders, people who hang onto objects they didn't need in the first place and certainly don't need now but nevertheless can't bear to give up. I am sure that if I stowed away some of my son's Christmas presents, he wouldn't notice. In fact, I could probably bury several of them in the deepest depths of our basement shelves and that little boy would continue living happily, without developing even the slightest emotional scar.
But I would feel mean, probably because of all of that hoarding DNA. So I can't bring myself to demonstrate Kevin's bravery. What can I say? I'm a weak, weak mother with an unnatural attachment to Legos and Fisher Price playsets.
As you watch your kids playing with their new PS3 games or leaving Barbie accessories strewn around the house, are you considering the storage experiment? And if so, do you think you could go through with it?
Image: Maarten Wouters/Getty for Babble.com
