Cleaning up, cleaning out

Eric and I are in the process of attempting to clear out the garage. It's a bigger than normal garage, it goes back a little ways longer than most of the garages in our neighborhood (Don't ask me, we just bought it this way), which means that it's filled with more than the average amount of stuff.

So we're trying to go through, throw out the old stuff, find all of Caitlin's baby gear and determine what is still useful and what needs to be given away or thrown away. It helps that she's currently out of town (What? Again?! Yep - she's at camp with Grammy for a week!) so that she doesn't have to claim great love and affection for all of the gear that she hasn't seen in 2-3 years. Or longer.

Bags and bags and plastic boxes filled with toys and clothing and crap. Bags filled with stuff that had been taken away when she didn't listen to my threats that if I had to clean her room she wouldn't like how I did it. I'd swoop in with righteous cleaning anger, grab anything laying about on the floor, toss it into a kitchen trash bag and haul it out to the garage. The crying was pretty miserable, but her room would then be clean for a short while and after a single day, she would have forgotten that I'd even taken stuff away.

Yes, she has that much stuff. We are part of the problem, being the very first grandchild is part of the problem, and so is Grammy*. When your Grammy owns a toy store, look out!

Her room just isn't that big - 10' x 10', and you just don't realize how much all of this stuff adds up until you pull it all out at one time to sort through it.

And boy, you should see her pile of books! Eric made a single pass through her room a week ago to pull out all of the "baby" books and make room on her shelves and has built a pile one foot high and three feet across. That pile was created before the garage purge started. We now have an additional two small boxes of books to add to it. Whew!

So I'm thinking the twins may not need a whole lot of new toys. Certainly not any baby toys and Emma won't be needing anything clothing, once we get out of the newborn stage. Caitlin was a clothes horse, apparently! Now we just need to figure out what we do need.

Bigger house is on the list, but alas! you can't register for one at Babies R Us!





Updated: We just spent the whole day going through bag after bag after box of clothing and toys. Whew! Now we have stuff sorted into 0-3, 3-6, 6-12, 12-18, 18-24, 2T, 3T, 4T. That child has a lot! of clothes! And boxes of toys: infant toys, toddler and current. Tomorrow we tackle her room. Aieeee!




* We still love you!