Spring Cleaning

I'm a pack rat. There's no denying it. I come from a long line of pack rats on both sides of my family. One of my Grandfathers even made a living out of it. I have a great deal of difficulty throwing anything away. I just hate seeing useful things go to waste, and even garbage is useful. It's a problem... especially because I married my polar opposite in this respect. If there is even the slightest bit of doubt in my husband's mind... even the faintest hint that he might not be using something in the next ten minutes... into the trash it goes. His thought process, "I can always buy another one". What a waste, and by the way, we do NOT have a money tree out back. I suppose it works out, in that we have learned from each other, and we do meet in the middle, but its a struggle.

Unfortunately, we are well overdue for a toy clean out. My kids have far too many toys in our we-don't-have-a-family-room-house. We never really did a toy clean out at Christmastime, (which is when we usually do it), because we were all so sick. Leila's birthday is coming up, and I know we just need to get rid of some things. So I have been picking away at it, packing up one box per week of things to go to goodwill. I was pretty ruthless for me, (which is nothing compared to what my husband would do), but what I really needed was the chance to do it all at once. Tonight was that night.

Just before we put the kids to bed we gathered EVERY SINGLE TOY into the living room. It was piled high on the floor. What a mess. Then, after the kids went to bed, we went to work. 3 hours later we have a pile of things to go. Too bad its midnight and there's still stuff everywhere! I think we did pretty well. there were no fights. I was ruthless, he was compromising, and in the end, we have two garbage bags going to good will, and 2 garbage bags packed up for "redistribution", plus 3 large items. Here is what my dining room table looked like. It was the "get rid of" pile.



And there's my happy hubby, thumbs up for all the stuff I am willing to part with!

Now I just need to get all the pieces of all the toys back together and where they belong...