Regeneration

You know how certain creatures regenerate parts of their body?  If something gets cut off, they just grow another one?  Well, I think the stuff in my house is regenerating.

So far, to prepare for the move, we have cleaned out closets, drawers, the attic, the garage, and the storage room in the garage with the hope of *purging* ourselves of all the excess we have accumulated here in the last 9 years.  We have thrown SO MUCH stuff away, it's embarrassing . We have taken two loads to the dumpsters where Brad works 'cuz we didn't want to overload our poor Waste Management guys.  If we had put all that trash at the road, they probably would have laughed, said "Yeah, right," and kept on going! 

Now I could easily get on my soapbox about the excess stuff we all live with here in America, but I won't.  I can tell you that many, many times during this process we both said that nobody should have this much stuff.  Most of our "stuff" is clothes, and it's kind of  a curious thing because I'm not even a shopper!  It's also shameful to see how many clothes I have and then realize I wear the same things over and over again!

The attic was probably the most fun.  I'm serious!  The kids, especially Poptart, absolutely love to get in the attic.  Weird, I know.  It's not so much getting in the attic as climbing the stairs.  My kids think their lives would be complete if we lived in a house with stairs.  Well, that and a trip to Disneyworld.  Well, that and a trip to Disneyworld, and a dog.  Oh well. 

A couple of Saturdays ago we started emptying the attic.  We would bring a load down into the living room, go through it, decide what to keep, what to give away, and what to throw away.  Once done, we would bring down another load.  This process would have gone a little faster, but when you open a box and you haven't seen the stuff in literally years, it's too easy to stop and take a walk down memory lane.  My weakness was baby clothes.  What is it about a 3T Star Wars shirt and a 3-6 month little dress that makes me cry? 

But then I had a thought....I can't see myself, say in 10 more years, cuddling up to Gogurt's size 12 jeans!  I think clothes are kinda like feet, the smaller they are, the sweeter they are...

Once we had emptied the entire attic, (that was a good feeling!), we took the stuff we were keeping to the new house and the stuff we were throwing away to the dumpster.  Then, on every Saturday since, we have tackled closets, drawers, rooms, etc., and repeated that process. 

With all that said, you would think if you walked into my house right now, it would be almost empty.  WRONG!  Something mysterious is happening here - someone help me understand it!

Why, how, can we have gotten rid of so much yet when I walk into a room or closet, it looks just as messy as it did 3 weeks ago?!?!  Arrrggghhhh!

I think we've decided to  start over and purge more seriously.  Like, keep only 7 of everything.  One for every day of the week.  Except jeans, 'cuz you can wear jeans waaaay more than 1 day a week before washing them.  Really, the only thing we would need 7 of is underwear and now that I think about it, we could probably get by with even less than that since my kids don't bathe every single night of the week. 

And toys, oh yes, toys.  We need to get more serious about toys.  Choose, I don't know, maybe half-a-dozen to make the move with you?  Does that sound fair?  Oh wait, I think I hear my kids hyperventilating right now....