Garage Cleaning

This weekend our new refrigerator was delivered, which spawned a day of garage cleaning.  These two things may not seem in any way related, but in this case they are.  See our old refrigerator moved to its new home in the garage. BUT before it could move into its new home we needed to evict the current resident...lots and lots of stored kids stuff.

When we first moved into our house we parked our car in the garage.  And like many of you out there, once our son was born we started accumulating STUFF. Lots and lots of stuff!  I tried to minimize the stuff but being the only grandchild on both sides stuff happened weather we liked it our not.  On birthdays and holidays things like Hot Wheel jeeps and John Deer ride-on tractors would appear on our doorstep courtesy of our generous family members (with and without our blessing).  Our garage is the boneyard where unused or outgrown toys go to retire.

I'm not generally a keeper of stuff (I'm more of a tosser of stuff), the bigger the piles got the less motivated I was to organize and de-clutter.  This summer we made a list of projects we wanted to tackle.  Cleaning out the garage being near the top of the list.  But, neither my husband or I have been particularly excited about this task and I keep putting it off in hopes that my sister who is expecting a little girl this winter would somehow be willing and able to move the contents of my garage into hers.  She lives several states away so this was a pretty lofty and not very realistic hope.  Anyway, the refrigerator gave us the push we needed and somehow making room for the refrigerator turned into an all-day garage cleaning spree.

I went through all of the boxes of baby clothes, blankets, and toys that I'd been saving.  I put together four boxes.  The first was a box of blankets that were hand made for our son, the blanket, shirt and hat he wore in the hospital, his first pair of jeans, and his first Christmas outfit. The second is a box of clothes, toys, and blankets for my sister's baby.  The third is a box of clothes that are in good condition and will go to the consignment store.  The fourth is a pile of toys that I will Craigslist.  The rest of the clothes were bagged up and donated our local church or given to our neighbor.  The remaining toys (many of which are high quality and in great condition) we gave to our son's old daycare provider.

It was hard for me to make the decision to give away perfectly good toys.  I felt guilty giving them away and originally wanted to sell them and put the money in my son's savings account since they are in fact his toys.  However, I realized that the idea of selling them was hindering me from getting rid of stuff because I didn't want to bother with the hassle of selling them.  So  giving them to our son's old daycare provider made me feel good that the toys would be appreciated, would have a good home, and would give back to someone who had done so much for us.  It was a win/win.

We still have a ways to go before our garage is clutter free, but I was astonished at the amount of work we accomplished in a day.  The old refrigerator found a new home as did much of son's old stuff! And I feel free of all of excess stuff in our garage!