I remember when Travis and I moved into our townhouse about 5 years ago this month. It seemed so big and like we would never fill up the rooms.  Somehow, we have managed to fill the rooms.  Every closet is full and we’ve got a surprising number of full bookshelves. 

So we’ve  been cleaning things out so that:

1) Genghis actually has a room to call his own and we can get to his crib

2) My family, who is coming to visit next weekend, has a place to sleep. 

3) I figure all this de-cluttering and cleaning will be much more challenging after the little guy makes an arrival, so better to do it now. 

Travis put together a bunch of new storage shelves in the basement and we’ve been sorting and moving stuff downstairs.  He’s also adding shelves to one or our upstairs closets and assembling a new dresser.  That’s my handy guy.

Interesting discoveries from the cleaning/sorting:

1. 2 masks – 1 sun, 1 moon

2. Gifts that we had purchased with specific people in mind, then forgot about

3. Random science toys that we’ve gotten over the years (and clearly understand the principles behind…) . Geeks in love.

4. My grandmother’s enormous pink, green, and yellow plaid taffeta throw pillows (in a closet, since they’re too big for all of our furniture. They’d work if we lived in a castle)

5. A pair of jeans that I painted flowers and other stuff on in middle school.  Why do I still have these?  I don’t know, but I can’t throw them away (or wear them).

6.  A shocking number of candles. You’d think we were pyromaniacs or goths with the number of candles we found in our closets.  Some of them I recognize from college, except that they’re partially burned and faded now.

7.  Books, books, and more books.  These are surprisingly difficult to part with, since each one is associated with memories of school, vacations, hasn’t been read yet, or just was fun to read. We’ll see how I do with this…