Cleaning Out (originally published July 31, 2013)

Today I tackled the monster under the stairs. That’s the big closet where we throw everything when we don’t know where else to put it. Suitcases? Check. Giant sleeping bags that could probably sleep more than one person? Got two of those. Bags of tissue paper, gift boxes, and gift bags? Lots of those. I even have gift bags with Noah’s Ark on them, which means that they date from Adam’s baby shower, twenty years ago.

Stacks of DVD’s and old videos. Those I carefully sorted and alphabetized. Someday we might want to watch the Mighty Morphin Power Rangers movie again. Then again, probably not. But it’s under M, just so you know. We did toss the videos we had taped of old Barney, Sesame Street, and Shining Time Station episodes. Pretty sure the boys have outgrown those.

That stuff was easy to clean out. It was the other stuff that was harder.

Two boxes of crayons, colored pencils, protractors, and other homework necessities. Don’t need that anymore. But that didn’t go in the trash. I sorted it all out, bagged it in ziplocks and stowed it elsewhere. You never know when you might need a burnt sienna crayon, after all.

Three bags of college brochures and SAT prep materials. That all went in the trash. College decisions have been made, tests taken. So much stress at the time, but irrelevant now.

Lots of half-used notebooks with equations and notes. Old folders with Yu-Gi-Oh (is that even on TV anymore?) and Star Wars characters. All trash now.

Adam’s backpack, abandoned after graduation, and since he left three days later, never emptied. My son saw no point in taking anything out of his backpack. I think it had the contents of his entire senior year stowed inside. His philosophy was, “If I never take anything out of it, I’ll never lose anything, and I’ll have everything I need.” Yep, plus lots of other stuff. 50 cents and two bags of candy inside. Permission slips I had signed and apparently never turned in by him. How did he get to go on that field trip, anyway? Progress reports of grades. Might have wanted to have seen those at the time, but maybe he was sparing himself the parental drama.

I carefully went through all the papers, not wishing to throw something valuable away. My efforts were rewarded – I found the letter he had written to himself when he was a freshman, returned to him his senior year. Priceless. A poem he had written about himself. Things he’ll want to have later, a portrait of who he was back in high school. The letter’s envelope also had his freshman year band photo and two ticket stubs – one to a Ducks hockey game, one for the Star Trek movie. A mini time capsule.

You know how when you clean out one thing, it just leads to more tasks? That was my day. The crayons and colored pencils had to go somewhere. I have another stash of kids’ art supplies in the kitchen buffet. Time to pull all of that stuff out, sort it, and add the other items. We still have coloring books down there. Those stayed, with the random pieces of construction paper and the four bags of crayons. We will have grandchildren someday, after all.

Above the shelves, we have four drawers, some filled with more junk than others. Two of them were so full that when you tried to close them, stuff spilled out the top and fell onto the shelf below. It wouldn’t have been so bad, except for some reason the push pins were what had escaped and were all over the place. Apparently we need two boxes of push pins and about eight rolls of Scotch tape. Who knew?

So now I was tackling the junk drawers and organizing all those odds and ends. That’s when Josh walked in on me. “Why are you cleaning out those drawers, Mom?” Really. Like he’s never been frustrated trying to find a Post-It note that’s actually sticky on the back and a pen that works. By the way, if you need a pen or a pencil, see me. I have about a thousand, and that’s not exaggerating a whole lot.

The good part? Sending my husband a picture of the closet that you can actually walk into without crushing something. Realizing that I will probably never have to buy office supplies again in my life. Tossing two giant bags of trash and saving two bags and a box of random things for a future yard sale. And marking another passage in the life of our family, one that doesn’t require lunchboxes and notebook paper.