Have you ever had to deep clean your house? I’m talking about the sort of thing people usually do when they’re either moving or expecting to appear on reality TV. The kind of cleaning where you throw out or give away everything you haven’t used in the last ten years (at least). The kind where you realize that you still have your kids’ toddler artwork, stored in a large bin, because you were sure you were going to need it to create scrapbooks of their childhoods. The kind where you have to dig through piles of old wrapping paper, Christmas decorations, and baby toys in order to find the hammer and nails to put up that picture you forgot about three years ago.
Yeah, that.
We’re not moving, nor are we signed up for a reality show. But we’re in process of making some changes, because while I wasn’t looking, the kids got big. They’ve been sharing a bedroom for the last five years, but they’re ready to branch out. Their shifting needs require us to rearrange, reorganize, and redecorate. We move to the unused master bedroom, they each get their own rooms, and the basement storage area gets an update, as we had to clear it out to store a few things that won’t fit or won’t be used until later. So far, we’re one room down (basement), three to go. It’s a big job, but we’re Team Mitchell and we can do it! (When I dubbed us Team Mitchell, my son glared at me and said, “I didn’t agree to that name.” I told him too late, he was born into it.)
Speaking from personal experience here, when you clean out a room, you have to immediately use it for something. Otherwise, you end up filling it up with more useless junk that you have to pick through. For the time being, the basement we just cleaned will be home to the furniture intended for Sarah’s room while we paint the master bedroom. After that, your guess is as good as mine as to what we’ll do with the basement.
This alteration in our tiny corner of the world is just one of many big changes coming in the next few months. We’re headed into the unknown. I suppose this is what happens when kids grow. Feels like it crept up on us unawares, though. It seems like ten minutes ago they were babies, and five minutes ago we were making the necessary changes to move Sarah into the room she shares with her big brother.
Here’s to a summer of readying our ship to sail into the adventures awaiting us.
