Tuesday, October 28, 2008

Putting a stop to the clothing 'issue'

Took the girls shopping this weekend at a local outlet mall since the child support adjustment has sort-of gone through. Sybil is reimbursing us until it officially changes with the state/county/whomever. We almost fell over when she dropped that check off but I digress. Not that they didn’t have plenty of clothing but I’ll admit they didn’t have as much as they should. Sybil has spoiled them to the point of no return so they don’t expect any limitations to their expenditures. I realized that rather quickly on a shopping trip last spring when they both proceeded to put $10 underwear in the cart.

I told them if they could manage to get 5 full ‘winter’ outfits with $200 they would a $100 bonus to spend on whatever they wanted –clothing related (shoes, fancy underwear, whatever.) Don’t even ask me why MN needs fancy underwear because I am baffled and a little sick to my stomach about it.

MN was hardest to shop for because she’s 12 and wants to wear Juniors clothing and she’s tiny- like a size 10 or 12 in dresses and jeans. Trying to find a pair of “skinny’ low rise jeans (which are the only ones she’ll wear) in the kids section is next to impossible. I had some luck at Old Navy but those weren’t ‘cool.’ So in Juniors she’d be like a size 00, which barely exists. Why don’t they just go into the negative in sizes? I think we had some success at like Rue 21 or Pac Sun…thank the LORD because if we had gone a whole day shopping with her coming back with a few t-shirts I think I would have lost it.

Overall the trip was successful and I’m really proud of how conscientious they were with their budget. I think their math skills improved a bit too because there were a lot of sales for them to calculate the % off. We of course then had to have “the discussion” about how they need to make an effort to keep the clothing from us and from their mom straight. For example, they had their mom drop off a bag of clothes that they wore on Thursday and Friday then they wore one of their new outfits to school on Monday. They fully expect to pick the clothes up that their mom dropped off for them whereby keeping the ones from our house and taking the ones from their mom’s. So on Wednesday night when they come again (BTW- we get them every Wed & Thursday overnight and every other Friday-Monday) they’ll probably be wearing something from their mom’s but that outfit they wore on Monday is still over with their mom. They’ll wear another new outfit from us when they leave on Friday and leave the outfit from their mom’s (maybe or pick it up) which is where we will loose outfit #2, so on and so forth. Seriously, they would think this is okay. They’ve done it already. We’re missing a lot of their stuff and it’s hard to keep track.

So we made the rule this weekend that they are no longer allowed to have their mom drop off outfits. They need to manage the situation on their own. Sybil is enabling this behavior and it needs to stop. I can understand if it’s for something special like a dress or something but the day to day stuff needs to stop. They have plenty of clothing and they need to make due with what they have. Hopefully this weekend will have assisted in stopping the madness. We shall see.

3 comments:

  1. Isn't it funny how things like clothing can take on a whole new dimention of crazy with moving kids back and forth? I used to have this issue, but then I started writing my name on the tags of all the clothes I wanted to make sure I got back, and I think seeing my name was enough to make her want to give it back to me :)

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  2. That is clever. I'll have to think about that.

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  3. that is clever! found your blog via some other blog LOL sometimes I think I have it bad but when I read these other blogs I realize I don't - I feel for ya.

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