The High Price of Creativity

This will be brief.  I've been cleaning up while Geoff and the boys are out of town camping, and one truth, in addition to the truth that I miss them like crazy, has hammered itself into my head.  Creativity is costly.  I am a firm believer in providing children with ample opportunity to create - in play, in word, picture, in random three-dimensional sculpture.  I am also a firm believer in allowing children to explore and discover nature - leaf collections, rock collections, and yes, the occasional bleached squirrel skeleton, compliments of Tiny the Ferocious Feline.

These cherished beliefs of mine, however, are not without price.

While the cat freely provides rodents to bleach and mount, I don't dare calculate the amount we spend on art supplies.  Paper, crayons, markers, paint, play dough, clay (because it's not the same as play dough), beads, pipe cleaner...  I honestly could fill a cart with art supplies and still wish for more, as could my children.  If the cost of these things was only monetary, it would be a small price.

But money isn't everything.  Sanity is at stake here, too.

Try stepping around squirrel vertebrae when you tuck in your sweet little boy.  Try finding a skull as you clean his room, or another vertebrae among your freshly washed clothing.  (At least we bleached the thing... Next time, we'll use stronger glue to mount it).  Try finding homemade books in every phase of composition, and then try to figure out what to do with them.  Try to figure out just how many sets of crayons, markers, and colored pencils are floating around the house - and then try to keep track of which ones are truly washable and thus less threatening in the hands of an "artistic" two-year-old.  Try keeping the rock collection out of reach of little hands that might rearrange the carefully sorted specimens.  Try teaching four children in varying stages of competency to distinguish between "keepers" and "tossers," and then try figuring out where the "keepers" should be kept and teaching your prolific little artists and authors to... get this... put everything away where it belongs, even and especially if it belongs in the trash can!


It's enough to make a mother understand why trash bags are made by a company called Glad.  But that can be our little secret...