CLUTTER and WOES

  Doesn't she look like a happy great future chef? Adorable future housewife? Compassionate care giver? Currently she's an emerging super tattoo artist!

  After almost two years of independent living our daughter has decided it's not very cost effective to run a new business and a new household simultaneously. Somehow the cash flow out is just too high and it's eating away at her investments. So she gave her landlord notice to vacate and November 3rd her buddies assisted her with moving into our home. 
  Hubby is delighted to have her back though she's running her life parallel to her needs not his. He's okay with that. But I'm a bit more skeptical about my girl whose intentions of being organized and domesticated are like many artists,  not a priority. To have things ship shape as I would have them hardly matters to her unless someone special is coming around for a visit. 
  Check out my living room on the first day of her re-entry. She assumed no one was coming. Happily no one was.

After a couple of days the living room area was emptied and I could see my sofas and dining room table clearly. Several items still remain.  

   But as it happens her stuff was just shifted up to a second floor bedroom right at the top of the stairs. There her chaotic ways continue. However, she promises it will be dealt with soon. Perhaps even tomorrow? Her bed seems to be buried but that's no problem for her. She just goes over to her cousin's or a friend to hang out since they live in the city where all the action for artist tends to be. She may be home tonight but late. And then she may have to rest because Mondays are usually her day off unless an appointment was pre booked for some ink to skin. Her world is so different from one I am familiar with. I was a teacher and lived by the rules of my times. That's how it had to be. But it's different now.

   From several documentaries and first hand experience I know that some of our generation's children are coming back to parental homes and it is quite a trend due to the shift in the current economic job situation. Their age group is highly impacted by our generation's assumptions that good education leads to job opportunities and job security. What we all came to expect from our own paths and achievements is no longer the pattern nor the norm. It is far from the truth now! With modern mass production lines where machines do assembly work we have reduced chunks in the job force. And we even have over production a times. Careers we once held are being phased out. Even school classrooms as we know them will have a new look by 2030 because the curriculum is now being tailored to individuals working on tablets and will do much of it from remote locations rather than at desks in a school building. Only group activities would be the exception.
   Though she runs her own shop she finds it is not easy to promote her type of skills for a quick profit. She loves tattooing and has become more skilled over the past 5 years but she could use a good marketeer to launch her into a larger client base. That costs money. So for now she's back with us. Her goal is to save on her cost of living and to afford ways to promote her craft. We are fortunate to be able to extend her that time for now. We've been partially assisting all along as an investment into her future business. In fact this reduces our financial gain a bit.
  But seeing all her clutter makes me think back to days when we did without so many frills. Shopping was different. Spending ideas were different. Advertising has had a huge affect on that. Today our middle class kids have come to expect more because of us. We have managed to show them that way. Clutter is so common as over purchased bargains pile up. We parens also fail to part with our things and they see that too. Clutter woes are an issue, one that's growing fast.
  Could daughter use some serious additional lessons on how go live with less? Probably. Would less clutter be the outcome? Or would less spending cause a negative downslide perhaps in our economy, the same one our generation put into place so that the kids of middle class could thrive?
  Woes to ponder. 
  Older kids moving back home?
  Perhaps family life is being reshaped so that some members will have to remain home in order for the job market to be balanced? 

P.S.  Our Ellie gained a feline rival / companion. Daughter brought along her one year old kitty, Chilli, to join our menagerie. And we also gained an aquarium full of fish that she inherited from a friend who returned to the parental home a bit earlier.