Shoes, cereal, milk, and toilet paper

There is a large breezeway that connects our garage to our house. It’s good that it’s large because it gives the nine of us the space to take off our shoes before we go in. That’s always the first thing that people notice when they come for a visit – shoes. There must be 40 pairs of shoes of all sizes for all purposes formal and casual. Sometimes they’re neatly lined up; often they are in a pile. (It depends if we know company’s coming over.)Sometimes at Wal-Mart I’ll see one of those shoes racks to keep shoes organized, and I think about how we’d have to buy about ten of them.

Then there’s cereal. Is there any food that kids love more than cereal? Pizza, maybe, except my little boys won’t eat that, but they will eat cereal. The other day I counted 65 boxes stored in our pantry in the basement. This does not include the open boxes in the cupboard above the stove. If it’s an especially popular cereal, we can go through a box in a day because not only do they eat it for breakfast, but they will snack on it throughout the day.

The cereal my wife buys the most is Cheerios, a General Mills product. Years ago I learned that General Mills was a corporate sponsor of Planned Parenthood. I thought that was strange. If I were the head of General Mills, I’d want families with lots of kids sitting around breakfast tables, eating my cereals. I wrote to them and asked why they were sponsoring Planned Parenthood. Their answer was unsatisfactory. So I wrote again, explaining what I saw as the illogic of their support. I won’t say my letters turned them around, but within a year or so they had stopped sending money to Planned Parenthood.

We also go through a lot of milk, seven or eight gallons a week. If you want to know who has the best prices for milk, call Lisa. A couple of years ago we had to buy a second fridge for the basement so that Lisa could take advantage of milk sales. We always have to keep a supply of chocolate on hand because Timmy, who is three, won’t drink any other kind.

The other thing I notice we go through a lot of is toilet paper. It’s probably a consequence of all the cereal with milk eating. We try to do our part to recycle, so we have taught our kids to not throw away the cardboard tubes from the centers of the toilet paper. The kids always leave them on the bathroom floor next to the basket. It seems like we have them next to the baskets every day – in both bathrooms!

Yes, with a lot of kids there are plenty of smiles, tears, shouts, and hugs. Those are the best. But it’s funny how the little things grab our attention: shoes, cereal, milk, and toilet paper. They're evidence of love, too.