Monday, July 26, 2010

Childhood bedrooms

Good lord, it is hot on the East Coast. I'm in North Carolina right now, and it hit 100 over the weekend. And that happens in Denver too, but without the comparable level of humidity, which is what makes all the difference. The humidity level in NC right now is about 80%. Gag. Luckily, my parents have central AC.

Also, my parents are on a house organizing kick, and unfortunately, this extends to my sister and me, as in, they want us to clear out and organize our bedrooms and either throw/give stuff away or take it with us to our own houses. All attempts to persuade them that our childhood stuff belongs in our childhood bedrooms for us to, you know, visit occasionally and show to our kids have been rebuffed.

In some cases this is awesome--there are a few toys and stuffed animals that I would have chosen to bring home anyway to give to Piglet or put in the nursery. But the rest of it requires, I don't know, work, and choices. And also, I always thought it was so cool when I was little to go visit my grandmother in the house my dad grew up in, and see the rooms where he and his siblings lived. I never got to do that with my mom because her mother died before I was born and her father moved, so there was no childhood home to go back to.

It's not like my parents are going to turn my room into a gym, Friends-style, or anything. As far as I know I'm allowed to leave all the decorations up on the wall (and they are legion), and we have negotiated that we can pick out a few things that we especially liked and want our kids to be able to play with that can stick around to be visited. But most of it has to go. And I'm only here for two more days, so I'm pretty sure I'm not going to get all this done before I leave, and it will be an ongoing process.

What about you? What happened to your childhood bedroom? If it's not intact anymore, was it a painful process to dismantle it?

26 comments:

  1. I was just having a similar conversation over the weekend about how much stuff to keep that our future child produces. I've always been of the mindset to purge purge purge. The less we have stored, the better.

    And the same holds true with my parents' house. I have zero inclination to see anything they kept from my childhood, save maybe some of my yearbooks.

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  2. My parents moved to a much smaller house the summer after my sophomore year of college. I had to purge all my childhood stuff then, and since I was still in college, I didn't have the option to take it back to my own house. I was allowed to keep one box of childhood things. There were many, many tears. I'm glad I saved some of my toys, though. It's fun to watch my boys play with them.

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  3. My parents no longer live in my childhood home, so there is no opportunity to show any kids that we do have my old bedroom. Most of my stuff is in storage, waiting for the day that CP and I are willing to take it....same goes with his stuff. It's going to be hard to purge it, but then again, how often would I take it out? Once to show my kids?

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  4. We moved around a lot when I was younger - by the time I was twelve I'd lived in thirteen houses on two continents so we did a lot of sorting and throwing away. So I don't really have a childhood bedroom, but the one I've had at my parents' current house since I was thirteen is kind of my room/a guest room now, without that much of my old stuff in. I don't really mind but that said I love looking through old boxes of stuff and seeing my husband's childhood room - his parents stayed put from when he was two so it's got pretty much his whole childhood in!

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  5. I'm not a saver of most things, unless they have a LOT of sentimental value, so it would really never occur to me to keep my children's rooms intact when they leave. I took my important stuff with me when we got married. My parents had moved by then anyway, so there was no childhood bedroom left.

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  6. I had four rooms, none of which exist anymore. But both of my parents moved a lot growing up, so I never saw their rooms and it never occurred to me that some people get to keep the same room forever! So that's not hard. But my parents DID keep a lot of our stuff (schoolwork, letters, art projects) and are now foisting it all on us. And I feel guilty about it, since they kept it all these years, but what am I going to do with it?!

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  7. Not 6 months after I got married, my mother made me get all of my stuff out...! Then she turned my room into a sewing room. My sister? had been married for 3 years by that time and still had her room intact!

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  8. My parents kept our childhood bedrooms intact until they moved from that house. Now, they've been slowly sending us home with stuff from storage. They did create a gorgeous nursery for my kids, so I can't complain.

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  9. Funny you should say this, because my husband has just been doing the same thing with his childhood stuff.

    His mom died when he was 1yr old. He's the youngest of 6, the oldest being 15ish when their mom died. They did what any good old fashioned farm family in MN did back then: they packed up all her stuff and never spoke of her again.

    So the attic at the farm has been sitting, literally untouched, since 1975. The only exception is that when David's dad remarried a few years later, the new wife (now my MIL) packed up more stuff- mostly outgrown clothes and toys and added it to the stash.

    So we now have several boxes worth of 60's and 70's clothes and toys, which is all kinds of awesome. My kids have a ton of "new" vintage clothing- some of which they will actually wear, others will be dress-up clothes.

    Anyway, perhaps I should do my OWN blog post? ;)

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  10. My parents moved when I was in college, so the takedown happened then. However, the move happened without me, and my parents respect sentimental accumulation, so all of my childhood clutter was moved en masse to the new house. There are still boxes in their new garage that hold old childhood treasures (or so I hope--it's been fifteen years).

    Two other elements made the move easier: the house I grew up in was in a college party neighborhood, and now my parents live in the country--SUCH a better place to visit. Also, they still live in the same zip code, so every visit home I drag the kids by my old house and point out the window to my room, etc. And there are all of my old books and toys that I can drag out and share.

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  11. There were a lot of transitions from my childhood bedroom. First it was mine, then mine and my sisters. Then it was just my sister's when I moved into the playroom as my own bedroom. Then many years later my Mom sold our childhood house. That was a hard day saying goodbye to it. One house for my entire life!

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  12. I cleared out my room when I left for college. What I didn't take with me I left in two cardboard boxes that I took as soon as I got my first apartment.

    This wasn't at all pushed by my parents: I was the one who assumed that when I moved out I would leave my room empty for them to use for something else. I probably made that assumption at least in part because neither of my sets of grandparents kept Preserved Child Rooms in their houses, so I'd never seen such a thing.

    I do think it seems like a huge waste of space. I'm trying to imagine leaving several rooms of a house unused because they're still set up for my long-gone children. But if I had a huge house with lots of extra rooms, maybe.

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  13. I got rid of most of my stuff before I went to college. Then my parents moved when I was 20, and I got rid of the rest. I don't remember ever feeling very sentimental about it, maybe because we moved a bunch of times when I was younger instead of living in the same house for my whole life.

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  14. I cleaned out my room years ago. My parents didn't want to store it anymore and I can't say I blame them. I threw out a TON, but saved some, too. My daughter has most of my old toys (and my husband's) to play with along with her own, which makes it nice. :)

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  15. I think my room stayed "as it was" for maybe six months after I moved out. I can't blame them--it was a tiny house and they needed the space. They did keep a lot of stuff for me in their backyard storage shed for years, though.

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  16. My dad remarried and he and my sisters moved to a new town four weeks before I started college.

    My room was packed and stored. I don't have a room in the new house.

    I never "went home." That always makes me really, really sad.

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  17. As you know ? I moved out at 17. My mom moved to my grandma's house(grandma was in a nursing home for a year and a half before she passed away in 2007) shortly after that, so I don't have a childhood bedroom anymore. Not even close. I sleep in one of the downstairs beds when I visit. It's very guesty. I've also lived in way too many places growing up to care if my "childhood bedroom" stayed intact.

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  18. Ugh, first of all, this heat is sucking the life out of me. I hate the south right now.

    Secondly, my childhood bedroom still lives on. Mostly because of my laziness after getting married, but also because my parents have a very hard time moving on. Actually, my siblings' rooms are still in tact as well. To be honest, I really don't want to go through that room and clean it (too many memories I don't care to share), but I know I'll have to do it one of these days.

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  19. There were four of us kids, so when I left home my room was quickly claimed by someone else.

    That being said, my parents are thinking of moving soon - and it breaks my heart to think that this might be the last time I get to take my children to it, and that they won't even remember.

    My step-mother saved a large box of my childhood toys, and there are a few dolls on the bookcase in my girls' room.

    My mother-in-law saved my husband's baby quilt, and when we had our first born we had her newborns photos taken on them, which was a nice way to incorporate some of our heirlooms in a special way.

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  20. Isn’t the humidity killer? We are having the hottest summer we’ve had in years, and for the first time I can remember, the humidity is making my hair frizz. And it makes it hard to breathe. Fun times.

    We moved a lot when I was a kid, so I don’t have a childhood bedroom to go back to. When I moved from my parent’s house when I was 19, I basically through everything I wanted/needed in garbage bags, threw that in the back of my truck, and go the hell out of there. There was a lot of animosity at the time. Before my parents moved to where they are now, I grabbed the last few things I wanted, but found that I had moved on from everything else I had left behind. I have my teddy bear that I slept with until I was 18, I have notes and photos from high school. And that’s enough.

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  21. My parents redid my room at home, but my mom kept a lot of my stuff on the shelves, like my old Disney snowglobe collection, old stuffed animals and trinkets, etc.

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  22. Neither of my parents live in the home of my childhood bedroom. When I moved out, I took what I wanted and never looked back. My mom saved a few toys which she has passed on to my son (most notably, my Legos). I am much more sentimental about my son's things.

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  23. When I moved out of my parents' house, my sister immediately stole my bedroom, so all of my stuff that didn't get thrown out has been boxed up and stored in the basement for years. My conflict is going to come when I inevitably have to go through what's left, because I have a practical side that will tell me I would never look at anything down there again, but I also have a sentimental side that is going to make me think that anything that's been kept by my parents is valuable. Blech.

    And as for the weather, I'll trade you. I was enjoying that it was 30+ C every day in Montreal, but now I'm visiting Nova Scotia and freezing my butt off. I actually had to put long pants on, and I feel like this is outrageous.

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  24. Ummm. My parents rented out my bedroom to a transient contractor the week after I moved out.

    I'm not kidding.

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  25. This is going to sound weird (or sad?) but I never really got attached to my bedroom, or the stuff in it. I had one or two items that were important, and those I kept. But I wasn't concerned with the room or anything else.

    Ironically, it's almost exactly how I left it (maybe a bit bare) and serves as a guest bedroom.

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  26. My sister and I shared a room that was bigger than our younger brother's so when we moved out he took our room. I collected a few favourite things but most of my old stuff is boxed up in my dad's attic. I'm lucky he's still in the same house really. I do look forward to sorting through it all some day but I hope I don't have to take it all away until we have a bigger house!

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