These kids have TOO MANY SODDING TOYS
My husband and I argue on only four issues: the correct way to load a dishwasher, the enjoyability levels of The Nolans' back-catalogue (he's wildly pro - I get so angry hearing them I could kill a hen WITH MY BARE HANDS), whether it's quicker to get to Birmingham by train, or by car (OF COURSE IT'S QUICKER BY TRAIN, IT'S OBVIOUS, DON'T START THIS AGAIN I WILL GET LEMON), and the kids' toys.
Personally, I think a child needs two dolls - so that they can go on adventures together - a pencil, and a notepad. That's it. Everything else is decadent Western corruption. When I was a child, we made our own amusements: drinking vinegar pretending it was whisky, flooding the garden with a hose, spitting contests. Punching each other really quite hard. Permanently mentally disturbing each other with constant, low-level psychological warfare. We didn't have Hannah Montana wigs, or Pixel Chix, or, or ... Puppies In Our Pockets. We made bows and arrows out of Rosebay Willowherb (that were rubbish), glue out of flour and water (that was wholly ineffective) and papier mache objects that, for some reason, never really dried out, and rotted on the windowsill, emitting horrible, oddly turnip-y odours.
That's why I want to - throw all the kids toys away! Genuinely. Well, everything except the Polly Pockets and Barbies, which they play with very nicely, and the dollshouse, which Dora has recently re-wallpapered very nicely. Everything else - off to the charity shop. There's so much that the kids don't have a clue what they've got, and it's always all over the floor. If they only had three things each, they could just neatly place them on an otherwise empty shelf at the end of the day- like Laura Ingalls Wilder used to, with her paper dollies - and the house would, finally, be tidy.
My husband, however, has some insane, sentimental notion that adults shouldn't hurl all their children's possessions into a bin-bag whilst screaming "THE MATTEL-ADDLED DISSOLUTION ENDS HERE!", and persistently crushes my bin-bag wielding reign of terror with a firmness that is, I must be honest, quite arousing.
However. My husband's unyielding headmaster thing aside, my nature is, ultimately, that of action. If I have a bee in my bonnet, I will listen to that bee - and, eventually, do what it says. So two weeks ago, I took exactly half the toys, put them in bin-bags, and hid them in the basement. Just to see. Just to test if either the kids, or my stern and attractive husband, would actually notice if they were gone.
Well, I think you can guess what the results of my experiment have been. Yes: confirmation of my theory, followed by massive smugness. I mean, MASSIVE smugness. I am pretty much unbearable at the moment. So when I finally summon up the courage to tell my attractively uncompromising husband what I have done, it could be the start of a new, minimalistic, era.