Spring Cleaning

My favorite spring cleaning activity is purging.  Old clothes, books, toys, stupid purchases (did I really pay for an avocado peeler?) and outgrown sporting equipment are given away.  The house feels cleaner and fresher, ready for guests and naps on the back porch.  It’s taken me years of living with a New Yorker who was raised in an apartment to learn how to let go of stuff.  I used to have every single thing with meaning saved—notes passed to me in the hallway dating as far back as junior high, letters received while I was in college, dried corsages, bouquets, favorite pairs of jeans, an old boyfriend’s Stanford Football jacket (I’m actually saving it for the day he shows up on Facebook so I can get his current address and mail it back to him for his wife or kids to enjoy).  Yes, I can be nice.

I learned to let go slowly over the years, but I still have trouble with my sons’ artwork and school work, all of it from pre-school through six grade, categorized and saved.  It’s taking over my garage and office and we’re only half-way there.  Since First Born Prince, we have moved four times, twice across country.  You would think I would be better at tossing by now.  I assign emotional currency to each and every pencil and crayon stroke they’ve ever made.  A friend of mine suggested I take digital photos of everything and then recycle it.  It’s not the same.  I already feel like I lost the little boy who created what I am looking at when I dig the projects out.  How will I feel if I lose his creations? 

Then there are the keepsakes that you simply cannot toss.  I have a pile of those sacred items in our master bedroom—the blankets and pillows from when my boys were little that I can’t even bear to put in the garage.

Today I eyed the bag and knew it was time to commit--make a permanent place for the assortment of baby blankets and pillows somewhere inside my home or store it.  I picked up Charming Baby’s “emergency” nee-nee (the real nee-nee, his blanket he slept with every night of his life for seven years, was accidentally left on a Disney cruise ship).  Caressing the soft, cream fabric, I smiled remembering when I bought the back-up “just in case,” he informed me I was wasting my money because it would never replace the real one. 

Sam, the Sharpie markings read on the satin trim of the blanket.  We labeled it his first week of Kindergarten to use at school for naptime.  His real nee-nee was far too needed and cherished at home to be stored in a cubby at school.  Without emergency nee-nee in front of me, I am not sure I would have remembered how we discussed which blanket would be sacrificed, labeled and sent to do duty at an institution.  Nor would I have so clearly pictured how brave he was the day I hung up with the Disney World Lost-and-Found Specialist, confirming nee-nee was gone, and he looked me square in the eye and said, “It’s okay, Mom, I’m a big boy now.”

I think it was I who cried that night realizing I’d never see nee-nee again.