Bet you thought this was going to be some Disney Frozen thing, huh?
Well with three kids under 8, that's a safe bet. But nope. Although I do like warm hugs.
In my effort to (literally and figuratively) lighten loads around here, I've made a pact with J to take very little with us to Japan. No furniture. No knick-knacky stuff. No "for fancy times" or "holiday times" or "in case we ever need it times" stuff. I have no idea whether we can pull off a minimalist lifestyle with 3 little kids and my strong subconscious impulse to save everything and get attached to everything and get things at the thrift store for no other reason that it was 50 cents and a nice shade of blue. But we can try, right? Moving to a place where some people live in houses the size of a typical American linen closet seems like a great impetus to give it a go.
I love my kids' childhoods so much; I love to look at tiny outfit or a little toy and remember each of my Littles at an even littler age, when they were so teensy and wearing this or playing with that.
But even if we did one day add another little to the mix, after raising three (plus bananas) for a while now, we know this secret. It's a secret that the baby-shower-planners and registries don't like to share, but it's a truth. Which is that, really, you hardly need any stuff to have a baby. Some diapers and bottles and a handful of outfits, all of which will get stained by some lord-knows-what anyways.
We could probably scrounge that much up if we ever needed to.
The point being, I don't need to save ALL of the cute things my kids have ever touched. Some things are harder to let go than others, of course. The outfits they barely wore before growing out of them and the toys that make REALLY LOUD REPETITIVE NOISES, for instance, are much easier to say goodbye to than the first Christmas dress or the chair I rocked them all to sleep in. So I started with the easy stuff. Baby steps, we might say.
I took loads of stuff to a consignment sale last month, and am happy that a whole bunch of toys and games will be traveling soon to the new AFC community center in Ethiopia. We've been arbitrarily passing stuff out to friends. Oh, you like that rocking horse? Great. Take it home!
It's true I started out gently, but so far it has been a relief to send things off to a new home. We appreciated all that kid stuff when we needed it and used it, but it should be appreciated again by someone else who isn't too big for it. So, I packed it off and it felt like a first step on a new journey. A step closer to Japan, to a new life, to a new kind of living, maybe. We used to have all that outgrown kid stuff sitting our my basement. But we let it go.
Well with three kids under 8, that's a safe bet. But nope. Although I do like warm hugs.
In my effort to (literally and figuratively) lighten loads around here, I've made a pact with J to take very little with us to Japan. No furniture. No knick-knacky stuff. No "for fancy times" or "holiday times" or "in case we ever need it times" stuff. I have no idea whether we can pull off a minimalist lifestyle with 3 little kids and my strong subconscious impulse to save everything and get attached to everything and get things at the thrift store for no other reason that it was 50 cents and a nice shade of blue. But we can try, right? Moving to a place where some people live in houses the size of a typical American linen closet seems like a great impetus to give it a go.
I love my kids' childhoods so much; I love to look at tiny outfit or a little toy and remember each of my Littles at an even littler age, when they were so teensy and wearing this or playing with that.
But even if we did one day add another little to the mix, after raising three (plus bananas) for a while now, we know this secret. It's a secret that the baby-shower-planners and registries don't like to share, but it's a truth. Which is that, really, you hardly need any stuff to have a baby. Some diapers and bottles and a handful of outfits, all of which will get stained by some lord-knows-what anyways.
We could probably scrounge that much up if we ever needed to.
The point being, I don't need to save ALL of the cute things my kids have ever touched. Some things are harder to let go than others, of course. The outfits they barely wore before growing out of them and the toys that make REALLY LOUD REPETITIVE NOISES, for instance, are much easier to say goodbye to than the first Christmas dress or the chair I rocked them all to sleep in. So I started with the easy stuff. Baby steps, we might say.
I took loads of stuff to a consignment sale last month, and am happy that a whole bunch of toys and games will be traveling soon to the new AFC community center in Ethiopia. We've been arbitrarily passing stuff out to friends. Oh, you like that rocking horse? Great. Take it home!
It's true I started out gently, but so far it has been a relief to send things off to a new home. We appreciated all that kid stuff when we needed it and used it, but it should be appreciated again by someone else who isn't too big for it. So, I packed it off and it felt like a first step on a new journey. A step closer to Japan, to a new life, to a new kind of living, maybe. We used to have all that outgrown kid stuff sitting our my basement. But we let it go.
No comments:
Post a Comment
Comments from the Peanut Gallery go here: Let's hear it, Peanuts!