Baby Free

While today’s post is mostly about decluttering, you might want to scroll on by if you’re not interested in “lady-things” like emotions and breast milk.

Don’t say I didn’t warn you.

I recently did one of those little things that turns out to be a big thing. I packed up all the baby stuff around our home – from unused bottles and pacifiers to well used strollers and high chairs – and I got rid of them all.in one fell swoop. *Deep Exhale*

I didn’t realize how much weight I was carrying by holding on to all those things. Indecision is a heavy burden, and there are few things more freeing than honest introspection.

We started to amass baby stuff – useful and otherwise – about five months before Hurricane was born. Coincidentally, that is about the time we announced our (long awaited) pregnancy and gifts started rolling in. God bless you all, but it was more than we needed!

A lot of things sat unused for years. We held on to some things in case we had a second child – which we did – but he still left piles of things unused. So we saved them for our niece, but even she wasn’t able to use them all. So we saved some of the stuff just in case anybody else needed it. Eventually we were keeping things just because it was easier to ignore them than to deal with them.

Or so I thought.

On the day that I got rid of all the things, I realized that I was actually using this stuff to keep a door open for a third child. 

I wasn’t saving anything for anyone other than myself. There was a part of me that believed I would need this stuff when we had another child. Which, mind you, is ridiculous because we didn’t need it the first two times around.

MisterE and I agreed ages ago that we wouldn’t (intentionally) have more than two children, but my younger self who had wanted six children hadn’t fully accepted that decision. I mean, “If God wants us to have another child, who am I to say no?” Right?

When Chief slowed down on his nursing, my hormones shifted and my body remembered that I am in fact a woman, not a dairy cow.

All of a sudden I found MisterE irresistible. All of a sudden I was scrolling through Instagram liking pictures of newborns. All of a sudden, three didn’t seem like such a large number after all.

Thankfully, one evening while stalking insta-babies, I stopped mid-“awww” and came to my senses.

I realized that the only part of me that actually wanted more children was my hormones. My brain, my body and my bank account were all screaming, “No! God please, no!”

I immediately texted one of our local pastors to ask if she knew of anyone in the church who had a need for a whole bunch of baby items. She told me that a shipment of children’s goods was heading to an NGO in Nigeria that same week and I screamed, “Hallelujah!”

I threw things into my car like a lunatic. No sifting through piles, no sorting of gear, no second thoughts. I rolled up to the drop-off point with the head of a rocking-giraffe sticking out of my sunroof. When I opened the trunk, bags of clothes rolled out onto the ground. It was epic and it was liberating.

On the drive home I rolled my windows down and just enjoyed the sting of wind on my cheeks. I felt so light I might have floated away if my seatbelt hadn’t been on.

I walked into a dark and quiet house. MisterE, bless him, had put the kids to bed and was watching the news. “You good?” he asked. I beamed and threw myself on the couch. “No more babies!” I panted. He smiled and said, “No more babies.”

Believe it or not, there is a point to this story. The point is: Make The Decision.

Do you love this sweater grandma gave you, or does it make your skin crawl? Donate or re-gift it. You will get more pleasure from the memory of grandma giving you a troll of a sweater than you will from actually wearing the sweater.

Are you really going to take up sewing, or will the barely touched sewing machine and yards of dusty fabric better serve at a school or women’s shelter?

Make the decision. Clear the clutter. And as always, have fun!