Thursday, May 07, 2009

Two Years Ago

Two years ago today most of our worldly possession were being loaded into a very large truck heading out of California. It was a strange, surreal, and hot day. I was so tired that I'm really not sure I had a complete thought in my head that day. If I did, it probably got lost in the shuffle that was my brain.

I wonder if our move two years ago has anything to do with the organizational and purging mindset that I have today. Is it subconscious? Or is it just me? Honestly, I think it's the latter. I think I'm just weird.

Our house is bigger, but I don't feel the need to fill every square foot of it. I recently purged most of Caitlin's size 2 clothes and gave them to a former neighbor with a 2 year old daughter. I've found a few more things, and the purge began! So far I have filled two large laundry baskets of toys the kids don't play with anymore (or ever, in some cases), plus a garbage-sized bag of stuffed animals. All three are hiding in the basement closet to see if they're missed. I sold all the leftover baby things- crib, bedding, mobiles- a while back, but forgot about the baby monitors. I've purged coats and sweaters, and will save the nice ones for the coat drives that Colorado starts doing around October for the poor or homeless (this place is a cold place to be homeless in during winter!). I am tossing things we don't need or don't use. And, I'm trying to avoid stores (except for a few awesome winter clearance sales for the kids). A friend is having a garage sale to help fund a missions-type trip she and her almost 7 year old daughter will take in July, so a few nicer items went there as well.

I keep having dreams that we need to move to a smaller house, and that I have to get rid of things. I don't know what the underlying reason in the dream is that we're moving, but I wake up exhausted from dreams of sorting and purging. During my waking hours I feel the need to rid myself of whatever I've dreamed about (short of furniture) so I won't dream about it again. Again, is this a subconscious thing I'm doing, since two years ago I was moving everything? I have no idea, but the purging is getting in the way of a few key things I need to wrap up before the end of the month.

Maybe I'm preparing to just spend a few months alone in my house with my kids. School is out in just over 3 weeks, and I'm on my own. We've made a few friends, so we won't be alone all summer, but it will still be a lot of mommy and kids at the park or swimming pool. When I spend a lot of time at home I tend to want to reorganize it. In short, I'm not sure why I'm doing all this, but maybe our moving adventure of two years ago has something to do with it.

1 comment:

Lisa (the girls' moma) said...

I'm feeling the same way -- but, as you just read -- I did move! So it's a natural extension.

You? Must be the old Spring Cleaning bug!

(I think we were reading each others' blog at the same time! Weird!)