WARNING: 18 and over only due to foul language

I've been hiding this for a few years, but it's time to come clean. This problem has caused me years of frustration, embarrassment, and countless hours of hiding and disguising in hope of keeping this secret hidden.

Jackson William Oliver is a toy-oholic.

That's right. My son – my sweet little demon child – has an unhealthy obsession with all things plastic and I have been hiding his shame from the moment he was able to sit up on his own.

It started innocently enough. Following the birth of Jackson, who just happened to be my parent's first grandchild, things started appearing in boxes at my doorstep. These brown moving boxes were packed tight with new clothes, books, blankets, and toys for my little boy, all lovely wrapped by Grammy herself. At first, I was delighted to see these boxes arrive. It was as exciting for me as it was for my baby! Who doesn't love a few surprises every now and then? As the months passed, the boxes kept coming. More toys, more clothes. It wasn't just Mom sending them, either. Soon, by little one's aunts and uncle got in on the box game and soon we were getting a box of goodies every single week. My son started anticipating the mailman's arrival and I couldn't help but wonder what power the mailman had over our family. He was the dealer and we were the peanut butter, poopie-diaper stanky junkies.

Time went on and our house began to fill up with random little knickknacks. Birthdays, Christmas, Easter … with each passing occasion we found ourselves getting more creative with the storage in efforts to pretend this all wasn't happening. Closets became toy boxes and under-bed storage became a jail of sorts for the million stuffed teddy bears (in this case, it was stuffed frogs & wolves to go with the teddy bears) that come along with the birth of any Power Ranger offspring. I had it under control. I was okay.

Then my child decided to walk.

With that fateful first step, my cover was blown and my little floppy baby had now become a toy-seeking force to be reckoned with. As fast as I could put toys away, he would find my stash and tear through it like a mom of five at a Wal-Mart anniversary sale. S**t got ugly. When he wasn't destroying my clean house, he was pacing back and forth around the house, waiting for the next toy fix. "Where the mail man?", he'd ask, hands shaking. "Grammy have me toys?", he'd mumble in his little 18 month old voice. Just as I'd convince him that there was nothing coming, BAM! The mailman would arrive and another box would be handed to me. I tried hiding them while my son was distracted, but he could sniff them out. The kid knows the smell of corrugated cardboard. I wasn't getting off that easy.

Fast forward to this week. After walking around my house, trying to find just one more little hole of space to stuff a cement truck the size of an end table, I snapped. Every toy in the upstairs of the house was emptied on to the living room floor. Every closet, every toy box, every bin I had hidden under beds, and every ottoman holding our dirty secrets were dumped. I looked at my demon spawn square in the eyes and let him know that this was enough. We had a problem and it was time to get it under control.

First, there was a wave of elation as the bounty of their years of toy hoarding was presented to them in a mass that had previously gone unseen by their little eyes. It was a mound of toys that easy valued in the tens of thousands of dollars. After five years of gathering and never really throwing anything away, my kid was experiencing the high of his life! Not kidding one bit – he swam around in that shit. Squealing in delight, he leaped on that pile of crap, never once noticing that they were getting covered in scratches and left over cereal bar pieces that somehow managed to live in the toy boxes for months. All was well and good until I started bagging that shit. I gave him a few toy boxes and told him to pick out his favorite stuff because the rest of it was going in the basement/Tommy's office until I had the courage to figure out what to do with it all. As Jackson scrambled, searching for his most prized possession, I was faced with the fact that we had become toy hoarders. I had allowed my beautiful house to become a crack den of sorts, if crack was cheap plastic toys from China.

After approximately 20 minutes, Jackson gave up the fight. He was no longer concerned with what made the cut and what was put in toy jail. I was in this battle alone and if I planned on making it out alive, I was going to have to search deep within my being and find that crazy organizer that every mother has in her.

It took me three days. Three. F***ing. Days.

As I vacuumed the remnants of the mess up – and no, I didn't stop to pick up ever damn little piece of Lego that was left in the pile – I made my peace with the mess. I was the mother of a small child and this problem was going to haunt me for the next ten years whether I liked it or not. Kill me. Seriously, kill me!

Mothers, we are in this together. No more hiding, no more excuses. No more, "Oh, that silly kid dumped out ALL his toys!" lies when Tanya, Aisha, Haley and/or Kimberly pop by unexpectedly and you know that Jackson has only taken out about 10% of his stash. It's time to own this! Yes, you will find toys hidden on the tops of my cupboards! Yes, I keep every little piece of every toy set the child has ever gotten out of fear that one day he'll need that piece! Yes, I still let my parent's buy my kid s**t and I still have to find places to put that crap! But – BUT! I will no longer hide from my own creation. The next time we have more than I can handle, I will bust out those fucking Costco bags and take care of business. I'll never let another five years pass by before I take charge again. Enough with the dirty little secrets.

Or, maybe I'll just drink away my worries until he heads to Reefside University. Burn this house down once he's gone and buy a motor home. Who knows.

Be kind, be caring, be kinky.