You Want to Get Rid of What?!

There’s a heated debate going on in my house.  It’s over this:Someone ::coughMyHusbandcough:: wants to get rid of this gem.  But the problem is, every time I look at it, all I can see is this:

Greenleigh, 3 weeks old

How could I get rid of that?  That swing was my extra set of arms for the first few weeks/months; the happy place that my kids hung out for hours on end.  Okay, scratch that, Hazeline spent hours on end in the swing, with Greenleigh it only bought me 5-15 minutes to change the laundry from the washer to the dryer and maybe make a sandwich.  I swear, that child didn’t want me to eat.  But no matter how long they stayed in it, there was no doubt that they loved it.  And now, even though we don’t really “need” it, I’m a bit emotionally attached.

The problem is, my husband has a point.  Shhh…don’t tell him I said that, but it’s true.  Our house is overcrowded.  Like I’ve said in the past, we easily have 2500 square feet worth of stuff crammed into a 1700 square foot townhouse.  And whether I like it or not, we need the space for other things that the girls can actually use right now, like the kitchen set that Erajh and I bought for Greenleigh or the baby doll highchair set that Hazeline got for her birthday.  I’m sure that both girls would get way more use out of those than the swing that they no longer fit into, and yet, I just keep seeing this:

Hazeline, 7 weeks

I can’t get rid of it.

But it’s not just the swing, there are tons of other things that need to be gone and I just can’t quite pull the trigger.  The jumperoo, exersaucer, and snap-n-go stroller all top the list, but there are so many more.  Just the other day, Erajh asked if we could get rid of some of our old small bottles that Hazeline doesn’t use anymore.  I said fine, but when he actually went to move towards them, I freaked out a little.

We do plan to have another baby (eventually), and there are things that we will hold on to for that child – the bouncer that’s in great shape, the new Evenflo Bebek bottles I got recently, and several rubbermaid tubs overflowing with clothes – but much of what we have, has seen better days.  For example, the bottles in question are stained, labeled, and scratched up.  Erajh and I agreed a while back that for the next baby we will just get new ones.  And yet they linger in my home.  I was never a huge fan of the exersaucer (it was great in theory, but not in actual use) and it’s missing a few parts.  That jumperoo that I spent hours scouring craigslist to find because it was the one at Greenleigh’s school and the only one she ever really liked?  Well, it turns out that Greenleigh never loved it in our house as much as she loved it at school.  And the fact that it refuses to collapse, makes it a prime target for the Goodwill/donation pile.  Oh and that swing I can’t get rid of?  The motor is just about done and it makes a weird clicking noise from time to time, depending what speed you put it on.  And yet they are all still in my house, each a memento of the time when they were so little.

Sure the idea of having more space in my house is appealing to me and now maybe you understand why my house looks like an episode of Hoarders, but please tell me that I’m not the only one attached to my “baby’s” things.  Anyone else unable or find it difficult to part with them?  Anything that you kept because you just couldn’t part with it?