treasures of trash

I've been waiting for them. The words that every mother dreads to hear. Perhaps you know the ones. Perhaps you have heard them. "Why are you throwing my stuff away?" Sarah finally uttered them yesterday. I wish I could say that I did the brilliant mom thing and said, "Oh, how did those precious things get in here?" Instead I said, "We don't need that stuff." It's possible, however, that the exact word I used was junk. At this point Sarah promptly fished her treasures of trash out of the garbage and went on her merry hoarding and collecting way. In my defense, these were not prized drawings or artwork. They were not special items given to her by some long-lost relative or dear friend. They were not special souvenirs from some memorable trip to McDonalds or Wendys. They were an old candy bag and some other such inconsequential thing. To her, however, they are most valuable possessions. I fear she has inherited the dreaded Crane hoarding gene. Or perhaps she has inherited the Vawdrey keep everything and reuse and recycle until it has turned into dust gene. All I can tell you is that the kid keeps every little thing she comes across and treasures each item packed away in one of a dozen bags or purses. She's kind of like a bag lady. It's making me loony. Above I have pictured two such bags--one is an actual backpack I purchased for her and the other a precious Rite Aid plastic bag. They are filled with an assortment of (I'm going to go ahead and call it what it is here) junk--a birthday party invitation from January, a party favor bag from the same birthday party, pens, pencils, half-empty sticker sheets, a ziploc bag with four beads, one of Zach's toys, a sock, some foam shapes, scraps of paper, Halloween candy, an old sugar cone she didn't eat, more candy, glitter glue tubes, the most recent thing that she has snuck off with from the kitchen, etc. The list goes on and on and on and on. I frequently find myself confiscating things and returning them to their proper homes or other out-of-sight and generally high up places. The kid is a Hoover--anything left out for more than 10 seconds gets picked up and stashed in one of her many bags. Sometimes it gets really crazy around here, and she unpacks the bags onto the table and then repacks the stuff into other bags. Unfortunately, sometimes she gets sidetracked, leaving all of the junk on the table. If I'm lucky, I can discard some without her knowledge or put some of it away where it belongs. Usually I'm not so lucky. I'm hoping that this is just a stage as I'm not sure how many more treasures of trash I can take .