Purging the Home

Turns out when you’re eight months pregnant and your kitchen and downstairs is being renovated, aside from the obvious “we get a new kitchen!” there’s a couple cool things about it.  One of them being that we have to pack everything that’s downstairs as if we were moving and when you do this you get to go through everything you’ve stuffed into your cupboards and bookshelves over the years. As a pregnant woman with a nesting itch that’s only been intensified by the complete lack of ability to work on a nursery, this is a heaven-sent situation.

Out came the binders full of meticulously filed bills from back when credit card debt and paper bills were a thing in our household. Antiquated paperwork that no longer needed to take up space in our home was sorted, shredded and scanned freeing up cabinets of space.

 Emptied are the drawers so full of junk that had me scratching my head in wonder, why have we kept this crap? I mean, really  why do I have 1,000 roll wrappers and what do these twenty cords go to?

After going through things I’ve held onto for years I finally accepted that college was six years ago, that trip to Europe was eight and that I will never be able to fit into that vintage dress from prom twelve years ago.  As I packed up our shelves full of books I took inventory, realizing I never even enjoyed the Nicholas Sparks books I’ve had for years nor did I particularly care for Julie and Julia. So why have I kept them for years?  This is nothing a yard sale with multiple trips to Goodwill hasn't taken care of and my goodness, does it feel good.

As we’ve been growing up we are shedding remnants of our past as we grow into a family and this is just another prominent step in the progress.  It’s not that we want to necessarily rid ourselves of the past, it’s just that it’s time to make room for the next step, which happens to involve a completely new downstairs, courtesy of our water heater. Oh, right and a new baby.