Packing it in

"Just throw stuff out," many of you said in response to my shelving saga. In my heart, I know you're all right. But I just... can't.

It's long been established that I'm a pack rat (unsurprisingly, that drawer is a total nightmare again 5 months later). I fully admit my failings in this area and I really do aspire to improve. On occasion, I even get as far as entering the playroom with a garbage bag and as much steely resolve as I can muster. But then I stand in front of the sea of toys and I can picture my children playing happily with each one and I start to feel a nostalgic ache in my heart. I think about how happy they were to receive these things, about the good money that someone -- usually not me -- spent on them and my heart twists even more. I think about all of the creative ways that we could use these toys in the future, all the joy that they still hold in them, and my heart leaps at the thought that maybe there is still a reason to keep them. And at the end of all of this drama, I find that I have not stuffed a single thing into the garbage bag.

Not the stacking cups which I know both of my children have long since outgrown but which make such lovely color teaching toys and props for tea parties. Not the See And Say which no one has touched in two years but which might, I now realize, be the key to teaching Evan that not every animal says moo. Certainly not the Little People dollhouse which holds as many happy memories as dust mites. Not even (and this last one even I am at a loss to explain) the container full of small plastic toys collected from birthday party favor bags and that basket of crap they give out at the pediatrician's office. I'm too attached to all of it. It all has meaning and value. It all must stay.

I imagine there must be a 12-step program for people like me, or some sort of alternative shock therapy treatment. But in the end, I think it's probably just cheaper and easier to build more shelves. Lots and lots and lots of shelves.