My Mental Load Is All These Goddamn Toys

Now that we’re finally naming things like default parents and the invisible load, I imagine many of us have stepped back to examine our own relationships and see how much of this stuff is at play. I have been pleased with my findings: My husband truly believes in being an equal partner and lives accordingly. Neither of us has assigned duties; we each just see what needs to happen that day and we divvy it up. Mostly it works. But there is one household domain that still takes up outsized real estate in my brain, and I just can’t seem to let go of responsibility for: toys.

Our dining room is home to an IKEA storage unit with six metal sliding baskets brimming with Hot Wheels, Numberblocks, action figures, dinosaurs, and the odd plastic cake slice that got separated from the play kitchen. I don't have to look to know that on top of this unit, rests more than one monster truck, a pickup with a raptor cage on the back, and a single dry erase board whose marker was long ago confiscated. This is not to mention the craft supplies spread between three different locations around the house, the stash of toys we’re rotating out in his closet, and the ones he no longer cares about dumped in the sunroom, otherwise known as the purgatory between here and Goodwill.

My son has always been particular about his toys. Those that came in a set had to stay in a set; it didn’t sit well with his soul if one item was missing. Tags must be removed. Stuffed animals, arranged in a wall-like formation around his bed before he can close his eyes at night. And I get it, because I was exactly the same way.

Maybe it was the repeat viewings of Toy Story or simply a deep sensitivity, but as a kid, I could never shake the feeling that my toys had feelings. They couldn’t possibly, I told myself, but just in case they did? I had better do right by them. Having to clean out my room and get rid of anything was torturous — I imagined each raggedy Barbie feeling dejected and afraid, tossed into a suffocating trash bag, left to die. When I’d put away my little bucket of plastic horses and fences, I’d arrange them in the same formation I unpacked them from the first time. If I didn’t, I felt a pang of dread. I wasn’t diagnosed with an anxiety disorder until I was 18, but the sensation of it had been there all along. When my son lines up his cars end to end, I imagine he feels a lot like I did arranging my horses.

I convinced myself I was the only person who could dump out an IKEA bin of my son’s tiny plastic sh*t and, like a mystical guru throwing the bones, just know which ones can be donated without being missed.

As he grew, my toy anxiety grew with him; this time it was just about his toys instead of mine. I can tell you where any of his toys are at any time, lest we lose a single one. My son is aware of this knowledge, and he asks me so much I have a trademark refrain: “Look with your eyes first before asking me for help." I don't want him to grow up to add to the husband-who-can’t-find-anything trope. At 4, he does make a good faith attempt to find his things and is successful, like, a third of the time. Lucky for him, I always know. But I don’t want to.

I convinced myself I was the only person who could dump out an IKEA bin of my son’s tiny plastic sh*t and, like a mystical guru throwing the bones, just know which ones can be donated without being missed. It’s not that my husband hasn’t tried to declutter toys, but when he does, something deep inside me gets activated, and I follow him around the house, picking through the trash bag. "He asked to watch Dino Ranch last night, he’ll probably want this one again soon."

With every holiday, I dread the new influx of stuff I will feel mentally responsible for. Christmases and birthdays always require a full audit of the cache. I usually cull the herd while our kid is at school so he’s none the wiser, but even then, I feel guilty.

A handful of times over the last year, my scrying has been off and I’ve purged something my son asked me about later. For a while there, I blamed the dog, and honestly it was plausible. But after enough members of the Paw Patrol had gone missing, he was really starting to resent the fall guy.

Recently, I threw away a toy my son never played with anymore. It was so insignificant that I can’t even remember what it was now. What sticks with me is that my son asked about it and, tired of the charade and guilty about scapegoating the dog, I cracked. I just told him the truth. “I got rid of it buddy. We didn’t have room for all the toys after Christmas, so I gave away some that you didn’t use anymore. I’m sorry.”

I prepared for crying or really any form of carrying on, but it didn’t come. “Oh, OK,” he said, and he padded off to go find something different to play with. My son doesn’t care like I did — every 25-cent splat hand from the quarter machine at Cici’s Pizza is not some world-ending item if it up and disappears. He doesn’t care! The realization makes me giddy. There will always be the great ceremonial toy cleanout in March after his birthday and again before December, and there will still always be too many toys to store easily and logically. But I think I can deal with all of that if my son can.