Nope. Chuck it.

We’ve started The Big Purge. And while it’s time-consuming, I feel so liberated. Gone is all sentimentality. All of it. This is from the person who has saved my favorites of Thora’s clothes for the first 5 years of her life. I’ve sent the best items off to be made into a quilt. (More on this when it’s done!)

Here is most of it, but not even all of it. There’s a full plastic garbage bag of baby clothes that I’d thought I couldn’t part with, but it seems that I can. I look at that plastic bag and am empowered by my ability to not go over and pull them all out and coo over it all. No. I’m strong. Those are going off to clothe other sweet baby girls somewhere else. Despite my steel resolve, I have to admit that there are a few precious items that I somehow can’t seem to part with and also couldn’t bear to have cut into squares as part of the quilt. I guess the sentimentality is still a little bit alive, a zombie version of its once vibrant self, lurching and grunting around inside my subconscious.

But I am getting better! I saved the pacifier that both of my kids used throughout infancy (to be honest, Auric used his paci past his 2nd birthday, but JUST for sleeping!). And even though I knew as soon as I stumbled on it that I’d be chucking it, I couldn’t bring myself to throw it away before photographing it.

This paci has been with us since 2007.

So here it is.

Then I chucked it.

I keep clothes for years that go unworn. It is hard for me to shed. Apparently I loved the idea of that corduroy skirt more than I loved wearing it. Fear not; it’s gone now. Some lucky psuedo-hippy is seeing that on the rack in the goodwill store and is thinking it will be great. And to you, I say, “Work that corduroy skirt!”

But I can proudly say that items are flying out of this house left and right. Clothes and toys are being dropped off at donation centers. Hand-me-downs are going to friends. Old books are going to the recycling center book exchange shelves. Music is being imported onto our computer and then also headed off to the recycling center. And it feels soooo good.

How quaint, actual compact discs.

We have so much more to do, though. It’s pretty daunting to look around and realize that practically every single thing I can see (and lots of things I can’t even see–we have storage space in basement) will have to be dispersed back into the world, either by donation or moving sale. But to have our lives down to a few suitcases and a few boxes. The simplicity of it is intoxicating.