Fall Cleaning

When your eldest baby is born the same month as Jesus and is well-loved far and wide, you tend to accumulate a lot of stuff around this time of year.  Even with a bigger house and a playroom that I pictured looking like Pottery Barn and actually looks like a Ninja Turtle lair, we just don't have space.  So every year around this time, we do a "gut job" of Alli's room.  We reorganize the organizer bins, we chastise her for not putting things back in their place all year long, we get rid of clothes that don't fit her long legs anymore, and we stealthily slip Happy Meal toys, magic wands, painted rocks, and bouncy balls into trash bags to take to Goodwill.

Sweet Ryan spends his time reorganizing every bin, tossing toys, and sneakily taking the giant bags out to the car.  I empty the closet, boss him around, refuse to get rid of anything with a horse on it, and blog about it.  He loves the entire process.

At some point, the princess herself enters the room, begins playing with toys she hasn't in years, and begs for us to take some of the toys out of the bags.  "Oh, Kitty Softpaws!  Oh, my teacup piggies!  Oh, that weird painted rock someone bought me because I cried in Destin!!"  We argue, we beg, we bargain.  We win some, we lose some.  She accumulates more stuff in December, and we gripe about it until the gut job rolls around next year.  Anyone else in this vicious cycle?

You win this time, Kitty Softpaws.  But you won't make it next year.