Thanks to your motivating comments on one of my recent posts, I did my thrift store run the very next day.  Go me!  

<I s’pose I already mentioned it in Saturday’s post… but… oh well.  I wrote this first, actually.  And I took no pictures of the mountain we dropped off.  Sorry.>

Turns out, we had enough stuff to fill the back of the minivan to the top!   And you know what?  It was so invigorating, I have lots of energy for dejunking the rest of the house.  At least until the next drop-off.  Funny, how that works now.

Boy, have I come a long way since the nervous, “Oh, I just can’t bear to let all this go but I guess I will for the good of humanity and the sake of finding floor in the play room, but but but…”

Ha!

What was I afraid of? Getting arrested?

“I’m sorry, ma’am, but you can’t just give that stuff away.  Let’s take a look in these bags.  Yep, just what I thought.  Some of these were gifts!!!  That’s a serious offense.  Besides, these are valuable.  Somebody paid good money, and you’re just giving it away.  Looks like we’re gonna have to take you downtown…”

photo taken by http://elamorhaciaunirlandes.blogspot.com/

Seriously, the first massive-toy-purge I did this year, I felt so guilty and scared I could hardly bear to let the stuff go.  It would be laughable if it weren’t so sad.  I still didn’t get it, obviously.  I thought things like, “Can I really do this???” 

(This experience really was a turning point for me, but it was so huge that I didn’t even write a blog post about it.)

In my confusion, I thought that maybe I should resell it, then have some money to “compensate” for the “loss.” When Kid2Kid was only willing to give me, like, $7 for that big mountain of “good” toys, something clicked into place.

$7??? Forget it! The empty space in my house is worth 10x that! And the potential for good donating these things to people who really need them is worth even more than that!

Let it go, let it go, let it go…

I felt like an idiot walking back out of Kid2Kid with my mountain of bags, but I can be pretty stubborn when I need to be.  I considered freecycling the stuff, but knew that wouldn’t really happen.  Off to donate I went.  Even still, I had to caravan to the donation drop-off with a good friend doing the same thing so we could hold each others hands through the “traumatic” experience.  It’s amazing (and sad) what a strong grip our things can have on us.

It’s just stuff!

As my friend and I drove away from dropping all our “valuables” off that day, a host of wonderful feelings came, one after another.  I felt free.  Lighter.  Happier.  Less encumbered.  The connection with stuff had been severed!  Shall I say it again?  SEVERED!!!! It felt like a miracle, and it really was.

photobyZannie

So it’s much easier now.  Tossing stuff, I mean.  (But come to think of it, life in general has been so much easier since then!)  Donation drop-off runs are invigorating, exhilarating, happy experiences.  I still tend to put them off, but I’m trying to get better about that.

Confession:

We did get rid of one thing that I wish we had kept.

One thing! Out of all that stuff.  Not a bad ratio, I say.

Why’d we get rid of that one thing?

Well, the kids were so much better at letting things go than I was, I had to make a little rule.  “If they want to get rid of it, don’t stop them.”  So they gave away a doll given to C for her birthday last year.  I loved it, truly loved it, and I love the thoughtful family member(s) who gave it to her.  Beautiful quality, perfectly appropriate for a young girl, hard to find… It was great.  But she never played with Megan, so I let my little rule stand and I mourned her passing.

Now that Creativity has a doll house (another amazing garage-sale-find last week), she’s graduated to the little-girl-play-with-dolls stage.  Not sure why it took her until she was 6 to get there, but here she is.  Megan would have felt right at home in this cute little house.

I’ll smooth the guilt away and sleep soundly, knowing that what I’ve learned throughout this process is far more important than the loss of one thing I should have kept.

And besides!  It occurs to me…

Had I not been so brutal with myself in de-junking, there would not have been room for this beautiful dollhouse.

Even if we had shuffled the junk and made room for it in her room, there would not have been room for it in her heart.

Sweet little doll, you have not been tossed in vain.

PS: To the person who has Megan, wherever you are — we have found her pink boots.

<Groan.>