Piles of junk are driving one mom bonkers.
Running a household, especially with little kids running around, involves a lot of stuff. The kids have stuff, they bring stuff home from school, the grandparents give you stuff, other parents pass along stuff they don't need anymore. And of course, you've got your own stuff! That's to say nothing of the daily mail, which is a good 90% junk.
Where does it all go? Well, it either gets put away in the proper place, thrown away, or donated. But that doesn't always happen right away. First, the junk has to build and accumulate to the point where it annoys you and you're motivated to do something about it.
A mom is going viral for perfectly explaining the bane of her existence: All the "little piles" of junk.
Piles are usually at least 50% junk mail.
Photo by Alexander Grey on Unsplash
The natural form of junk is piles. As it accumulates, the piles will begin to form all over your house. The piles especially like the kitchen counter and the stairs.
"Here's what the single hardest thing for me is about being a mom," mom and Instagrammer Bekah Martinez begins in a video. "There's these little piles that accumulate. Mini piles. And I’m the only one who acknowledges these piles. These piles require so much mental energy all the time. Because there’s so many little decisions attached to every little item.”
In the video, she approaches a piano in her living room. Of course, because she's a mom and the piano's top offers a flat surface, there is a pile of random stuff on top. For our entertainment, she dissects and explains each individual item.
There's:
- A lightbulb
- A pacifier clip
- A Shrinky Dink parrot
- A small black plastic piece that broke off of something
- A Sharpie
Martinez explains that she can't just throw all the stuff away, or even put it away! The lightbulb is a rechargeable lightbulb with a charger that needs to be tracked down. Her son has aged out of the pacifier clip and throwing it away seems wasteful but donating it is another chore to do. The Shrinky Dink was a gift and it will feel bad to throw it away but no one really wants it. That mysterious little black plastic thing might be needed at some point if she can ever figure out what it's from.
"No one else in this family at this point in our lives is going to do anything with these little piles," she says, getting more and more hilariously worked up, as if the piles have broken her very spirit. Watch the relatable and entertaining reel here:
Parents everywhere — especially moms — felt so seen by Martinez's rant.
Parents and non-parents alike know all about the piles. Parents just have the added bonus of their kids finding things in the street, collecting worthless plastic Happy Meal toys, and bringing six-dozen pieces of artwork home from school every week. It all goes into the piles.
Commenters had a lot to say about it.
"I have two full draws of 'little piles' that I didn't have the mental energy for"
"[Piles cause] 90% of my overstimulation"
"This is single-handedly the most relatable reel I've ever seen"
"Death by a thousand little piles"
"I've been a parent for 12 years and this is the best video I've ever seen which explains it"
Junk drawer, anyone?Giphy
Some people had productive tips for dealing with all the junk:
"Get a basket and throw every little pile in it. If you don’t go to the basket to look for something within a month, you don’t need it so throw it away or donate!"
"I'm a professional organizer! ... Create 3 baskets that live in an area that you can ignored for a while. 1. Needs home (think the light bulb) 2. Donate (think the pacifier clip) 3. Memories (think the shrinky dink) ... Then, once a week, or at a cadence of your choice, revisit the baskets and take a solid 20min-hour creating a more permanent home or getting rid of those items!"
Others were in favor of getting revenge on all the people in the house that don't help clean up:
"I like putting the little piles on the stairs so I can watch the people, to whom they belong, walk by them on the stairs on their way to bed."
The greater point of Martinez's rant, besides the fact that the piles are annoying, was that it too often falls on one person in the house (ahem, you can probably guess who) to deal with them. The piles are invisible to everyone else, she claims, including her partner. It seems silly to complain about a light bulb and a Sharpie, but she's right: Dealing with the piles is far too big a mental load for one person to take on.
Some people get so overwhelmed by it all that they create "doom piles," which are especially common in people with ADHD. It's like a giant super pile, where you take all the junk and put it together in one place. It makes things look more tidy outside of that one area, but it creates a major headache for future-you. Experts say the best way to attack the piles is to do it in small chunks so you don't get overwhelmed, and ideally offer yourself a small reward for your efforts. A great way to approach it is to work on separating the piles into trash, put away, and donate for 10 minutes before you watch TV at night!
Oh, and partners who supposedly "don't notice the piles" (you know who you are), let's get off the couch and into the game. Go team!
