You need a room with a bed, a closet, and a dresser. That’s what the agency looks for and that’s how we started out. We had two room that had those basic accoutrements.
However, once you’ve been doing this gig for a while you start to accumulate stuff.
We started off with two twin beds.
Five years later we now also have two cribs, two toddler beds, and two pack and plays. The ones that are not in use are stashed haphazardly in our attic, frames, mattresses, and all. None of those, however, are useful for our new transition to having a teen (I hope!) and putting toddler and big kid in a room together, aside from one of the twin beds.
And the clothing? My God, the clothing. And the shoes.
When kids arrive, the county typically provides a voucher for clothing for the child. But any kid who’s been with us for a while has outgrown stuff that we’ve bought for them, and I always buy more than the vouchers cover anyway because the stores we can use the vouchers at have limited selections.
All the clothing that has been outgrown or donated to us is now in our attic in diaper boxes, all organized and waiting to be needed. And we do use it pretty regularly. Each time we get an emergency placement, we make sure that the child goes onto their next foster home with a few changes of clothing so that the next foster parents have some time before they have to go out with a voucher to get more clothing for them. (Emergency placements typically come in a onesie or a dress that’s two sizes too big, and with a pair of often out-of-season pjs the county has contributed. That’s it.) Plus, our own kids grow into sizes that we have stored up in the attic.
It’s all useful and organized but there’s no getting around the fact that we have an entire wall of our attic eave closets stuffed to the gills with diaper boxes of clothing. People often ask us if our kids need clothing but the little ones never really do because we’ve got so much stashed away.
Plus we have baby bottles up there in the attic because right now we don’t need them. And infant toys. And the basement has baby bath tubs and walkers that we don’t need right now.
Honestly, the amount of stuff we have is preposterous. And yet, we found ourselves needing MORE stuff now that we are opening up for a teenager and combining toddler and big kid into one room. How we didn’t have All The Things I don’t know, but we didn’t.
Seth and I have been on a major home clean out kick lately. We both can have some hoarding tendencies and we have been fighting them hard. During one of our quarantines, we went through room by room and got rid of a tremendous amount of stuff by throwing it away or donating it to various places. But there’s so much stuff that is related to foster care that we can’t get rid of because we will need it again. It’s a bit maddening honestly.
I wouldn’t mind so much if the attic were just storage. But it’s not. It’s also: my meditation nook, the home for two of our weirdest cats who refuse to come out of the attic, my sewing space, my fabric storage space, my art supplies storage space, and most importantly, my freaking home office. And my home office looks terrible as the background in video conferences because it’s so cluttered.
sprinklesonachaoscupcake.com 