The Cleaning End of Limbo

Monday and Tuesday, we got ruthless with the Stuff around here. I feel like a Big Ol' Meanie even saying that, because we don't have a lot of Stuff, relatively speaking. (OK, the Legos are getting out of hand. But four of the kids use them, often playing together, and it was my own fault for letting them into the house in the first place. They start out so innocuously, with those little $4.99 packets that come with one or two figurines and a couple of extra parts. There's no warning label on the packet that tells you you've just released the plastic equivalent of the Plague on your home.) But for the most part, it's not been bad. We have two toy shelves, which hold a total of nine medium Sterlite tubs, and 12 small ones. Each bin holds a specific item (hand puppets, magnetics, tanagrams, plastic cowboys/indians/army men, wooden blocks, etc.), and each child has one of the small ones for his/her own special things (sketches, pen innards, rocks - you know, Precious Things that I might mistakenly toss because I don't know better). Still, the Stuff had grown unwieldy.

So Monday, thinking to start easy, I began with the master bedroom. *snort* We did clear out a lot - mostly from under the bed, which held enough random stuff to make me wonder if everyone I live with is using it as a Room of Requirement. Then the drawers. Then the nooks and crannies, where things fall, gather dust, and become terrain for spiders. I thought I'd get rid of most of my yarn, as it's mostly cheap yarn and doesn't crochet up into anything comfortable, but Jacob gasped and said, "Mom! That's an almost endless supply of STRING!" He may have inherited The Gene... Anyway, I'm not done in there, but I gave up. The yarn is in the craft closet.

Tuesday, we tackled the toy shelves and a bookcase. All the VHS tapes? Gone. That freed up three shelves' of space. (I have no idea where we'll sit today, though, as they're all in the car to be dropped in town.) Then, on to the toys - things we've been promising we'll use "now that we know where they are" -- for the past three cullings -- are off to find a new home. Even now, nearly 14 years into this gig, there's a deviation between how I envision our family and our days should look, and how they really look. I needed to let go of the dream and embrace the weird. It's all good. Plus, we culled and cleaned the things that there is no one left to play with, now. No babies, no toddlers. Even Jase prefers the smaller Legos to the 1" Duplos.

So, in the end, we culled quite a bit. Enough that if we find a new place for the boys to keep their Special Buckets, we can now remove one of the toy shelves from a bedroom! That'll be a whole extra six square feet of living space we'll gain! (Which is roughly equivalent to enough space for all of us to stand side-by-side and stare at the wall. I know this. Still, it makes me giddy.)  Next, I hope to square things away well enough to remove the large book case from James' room and replace it with his desk. That's all kinds of exciting, when you don't get out much.

Kiss those babies!
~Dy