One of Sophia’s favorite books currently is There’s A Nightmare in My Closet by Mercer Mayer. In it, a little boy turns the tables on the Nightmare who’s been terrorizing him. Of course, she only asks me to read it during daytime, in the living room. She hasn’t braved it as a bedtime book.
I’ve been having nightmares of my own in regards to closets, albeit of a different variety. I’ve begun going through closets, pitching what I’m absolutely sure I will never wear again and have no desire to see again. The t-shirt from the Fall ’90 Product Intro? Gone. The corduroy shorts? Yuck.
But it just keeps coming.
I filled four black garbage bags full of clothes this afternoon. I have another two in the upstairs guest room. Plus there are probably twenty garments on hangers.
Who knew I had this many clothes? Certainly no one who knows me, since I’m definitely not a clotheshorse.
Of late I had begun making a list of exercise clothes to get before returning to walking/jogging. I discovered this afternoon that I’ve clearly made this list before, because I found the exact clothes I want.
What was scary was how many clothes still had the damn tags attached. And on clothes I would never wear. Did I buy this? Did someone buy it for me? Where did this come from?
And evidently when I was a size 6, I went nuts at the Gap, because I must have had six pairs of jeans in that size. I found sweaters my mother gave me a million years ago. (The pangs of guilt I felt as I put them in the black bags told me why I hadn’t gotten rid of them before. But still. They’re not surviving another move, dammit.)
I went through Sophia’s closets the other day. No wonder I haven’t been able to find any clothes for her either, given how choked her closet was with stuff she grew out of months and months ago. I have ten plastic boxes filled with clothes both tots have grown out of. I didn’t want to do it, but as Darin said, “If we have another one, we’ll get new stuff, okay? Let’s get rid of this.”
I still have to go through the linen closet. I’ve told Darin that my secret desire is to toss all of our towels and buy new ones for the new house, because we have so many towels that have frayed edges. We have towels I originally had when I lived at my parents’s house. These are towels that predate my relationship with Darin by several years. These are ante-diluvian towels, and I understand towel technology has improved somewhat. And if I got new ones, I could color-code them: certain ones go in Mommy and Daddy’s bathroom, certain ones go in the kiddies’s bathroom, others go in the guest bath.
The really big fluffy bath sheets will go in Mommy and Daddy’s bathroom.
What’s annoying the hell out of me about this spring cleaning/packing spree is that I don’t even know what to do with all this stuff I’m throwing out. Yes, yes: take it to Goodwill. But we’re talking several trips with a minivan. Bags and bags and bags of stuff.
I guess moving is good, because it clears out the clutter. But then the clutter just moves somewhere else.
I don’t know about there, but here, Goodwill will come pick up big loads like that. And they asked me to value the items and they wrote a receipt for that value for tax-deduction purposes. Very convenient. Good luck with that.
I don’t know how it is in your area, but here (Philly) the Purple Heart will come and pick everything up as well. You can call 888-414-4483 to find one where you live. They take pretty much everything; last time we gave them record albums and clothes and extra pot lids and knick knacks and an old computer and all kinds of other stuff.
Yep. Charities pick up here too. We’re about to call Out of the Closet and get them to pick up our junk from the front porch. For appliances and such, you can call St. Vincent de Paul, for everything smaller, Out of the Closet works just fine.