Pack rat Anonymous

Today I spent the day cleaning out Hannah's room. I am surrounded by boxes as I type, trying to finish it up. Before I got pregnant with Hannah, we made this room an office/guest room. It was also the catch all room for anything I/we didn't want to deal with at the moment. We planned to keep the kids in the same room once Hannah was born. Once she was here, and we decided it was time for her to move from the bassinet in our room, to the crib, I decided I wanted them to sleep in separate rooms. So we put the crib in the office. All she did in there was sleep, then she came out and the door got closed. She played with Zach in his room. All her clothes are in Zach's closet since "the office" has no closet. It is a tiny room.

A couple months ago we sold the huge desk. When we did, everything got crammed into boxes and stacked around the room. It also became the dumping ground for bags of grown out baby clothes, large baby items when not in use, toys that were annoying us, or anything that didn't have an immediate spot. It was not pretty.

On to my "Pack rat Anonymous" point.

I keep everything. I have finally decided that there are some things I need to purge. Cleaning out the garage last month really got me going. It is ridiculous how much I have. A lot I can't bring myself to get rid of yet, but I am starting. I have every paper from every day Zach has been in childcare since he was 14 months old. You know how they give you the reports with what they eat, when they sleep, how their day was, etc. Well I have them ALL. In binders. Organized by date. And now with Hannah in daycare I get 2 a day. AND Zach has been in preschool for a year and a half.

You should see my kitchen table by the end of the week.

So I have artwork from school and from daycare and now Hannah is starting to do art at daycare also. I had to start looking at things and deciding what I really need to hang on to. I don't NEED to keep every paper he ever colored on. But I do. I evaluated the quality of the work and started recycling some. I still have way too much, but in a year or so I will probably go through everything and purge some more.

Right now I have stuff organized in binders with sheet protectors and bigger stuff in a plastic storage drawer thing. Whenever I go through them, I see pieces and think "I should totally pull that out and put it up at Xmas/Halloween/spring time" .. But I don't. I like to think someday I will.

It takes so much time to save and organize this stuff, but there is something comforting in knowing that I can look back and know exactly what Zach ate on September 8, 2005. Or how his mood was on January 17, 2006. Or what his sleep patterns were in month 21.

It is a sickness I know, but I am working on it.

Baby Steps.