Nesting

I've had a sudden burst of energy over the past few weeks and I've been nesting like crazy. Getting things ready for the baby, but also just purging and organizing in general. I even went through the kids rooms and tried to get rid of old clothes and excess toys. I was able to go through Corbin's stuff mostly without his knowledge, chucking the junky things that he doesn't play with anyway. But I decided to elicit Tressa's help when decluttering her room because I was sure that if I threw something out she would somehow realize it was missing (even if she never plays with it) and get upset. So I made piles of similar items and allowed her to choose a certain number of items from each pile that she really loved, played with and wanted to keep. She did really well and we got rid of a lot, but after we went through the stuffed animals she started to look a little worried. "Are we giving these animals to the needy children?" she asked looking very thoughtful.

"Yes, sweety. To the kids that don't have any stuffed animals."

"But...will I ever see them again?"

"No sweety, but that's why we kept all your favorite ones."

"Well, can we maybe give them to one of my friends so that I can still visit them sometimes?"

"I think all of your friends already have stuffed animals."

She started looking teary eyed at this point. So I came up with a plan. "How about we take a picture of all the animals we are giving away so that you can always remember them."

She thought it through. "Okay Mom, but I don't ever, ever, EVER want to get rid of the picture, okay?"

"OK."

After we took the picture she seemed to feel much better and we went on with our evening. I got the kids in the bathtub and started bagging up the things we had purged from her room. Every so often I heard a sad little voice calling from the tub as Tressa kept thinking of items we'd tossed. "Mom? Did we throw away the (some junky toy she hasn't touched in months)?" I started feeling a little bad and I let her rescue a few things, but then I had to put my foot down and tell her that there was no more space to keep things, so if she wanted to take anything back from the junk pile she'd have to get rid of something else. She got over it after that. I know that adults often get into the bad habit of keeping too many things...becoming pack rats, but I couldn't believe my 4 year old had such strong feelings about her clutter. It was so cute. I think she felt good about getting rid of it in the end, especially since we were donating a lot of it. Hopefully it won't be so traumatic next time!