The spring cleaning bug has bitten at our house. Peter and I have gotten into the “clean up, clean out, organize and get rid of it” mode. Slowly but surely, we’re making our way through the closets, the cabinets and the toy bins (yes, there are more than one) and getting organized.  And hopefully getting enough stuff out to make a few bucks at a garage sale.

It’s amazing the amount of crap that you accumulate – especially when you have kids. It becomes very apparent after Christmas and birthdays when there is an influx of new toys and clothes. Or after a growth spurt where the “too small” clothes are tangled in a pile with the new clothes.

Because we are planning to have more than one child, we don’t get rid of a lot of Baylie’s stuff. Rather, we clog up most of my parent’s storage unit, which they are undoubtedly regretting offering us to use. As first time parents and first grandchild for my mom, there is an excess of stuff. We didn’t have 4 bottles, we had 10. And 10 of the various size nipples that are required for each stage of baby-hood. Don’t get me started on clothes – first grandchild, girl, first child – enough said. I could build her a full size house out of the storage bins of just clothes. Toys that she has grown out of, the baby bath that’s too small, the beastly stroller we used until she was big enough to fit in the jogger and two baby carrier car seats all are wrapped in trash bags (we’re classy organizers) and marked waiting for their next owner.

That said, I have come across a lot of stuff that I just don’t think we need to hang on to. Like stuffed animals, we have 29,000 of them and maybe 5 get played with. I’m not saying I’m the grinch and I’m going to get rid of them all, but some of the little trinket ones need to goooo. And the books that have been chewed up, torn apart and ripped up are out.

Moving on to my side of the closet….When you gain and lose 50 lbs over a 2 year period, the sizes of clothing in your closet vary wildly. There’s the pre-pregnancy clothing (aka, the skinny bitch stuff), the gaining-a-few-pounds sizes, the starting-to-need-elastic-waist pants, the super-cute-maternity clothes and finally the whatever-will-fit-over-my-ass-belly-boobs-and-doesn’t-look-too-bad clothes. And the process reverses after the baby is here. As the pounds have come off, I’ve moved clothes to what else, a storage bin. But I’ve never done a full sweep of the closet and the off-season stuff I put in storage under the bed. I’m more than half way through, just two drawers and accessories to go!

Peter has been hard at work in the garage. We have a great garage; it holds two cars and lot of stuff, which is both great and terrible as it tends to get messy easily. Thus causing me to walk through a maze of Costco paper towels, boxes of diapers, the jogger, the wagon, a bag of trash…the list goes on. He totally changed the layout of the storage racks and added a HUGE work table complete with peg boards and a new miter saw. Not sure how that’s helping us organize…but it is helping him make me a new “lettuce table”. More to come on that in a later post. It’s nice having a hubby who can sue people AND make stuff.

The kitchen, office and laundry rooms are next on my list. I think the level of difficulty will go in that order with the hardest being the laundry. We have a lot of great storage, but do not utilize it well which means a lot of extra work trying to decide the most efficient way to set it up. Currently it is the catch-all for a lot of crap – I found dog treats under a lot of other crap on the counter across from the washer the other day and started to freak out. I was picturing being on that show Hoarders and finding things I haven’t seen in years when I finally clean out all the junk. It was a frightening thought and has only fed my need to keep going!