When Your Child Leaves Home You Clean Out Her Closet

Kate's closet was way over due for "going through".  I've done it a million times - it seems like it -

but - it had gotten so out of control.

If you go to  her blog ever , you'll find that she is fascinated with fashion, weddings, ummm, well, Hollywood glamour - yep - she is - and she is not kidding and I am not kidding.

Good grief!  The magazines that were in that closet.  I did some major cleaning out - but don't panic, Kate, if you're reading this.  There's a lot of wedding mags I saved.  The good ones - the ones still in tact.  I kept albums you'd created - any fashion sketches I kept - but my dining room table is full of throw away stuff.

And to get it from her closet upstairs and to my table downstairs,

I had to make lots of trips up and down these

carrying as much as I could in my arms.

and it's  a narrow space between bed and closet,

so I was in the closet most of the time just sitting and reaching and pulling out stuff.

These girls wondered if they were gonna be cast offs or keepers.

I wondered, too.  I stared at them, stroked their hair,

remembered the look on Kate's face that Christmas when she opened up the dark one.

She'd seen it at Unclaimed Baggage - it was new, it was being sold in what used to be their furniture store.  She loved it.  I surprised her with it.  She thought Santa had surprised her.

and then the redhead joined the beautiful Indian girl another year - but soon Kate outgrew that interest and the two dolls.  They were just for display - not for playing.

Don't they look bewildered?  I could imagine that the Indian girl was whispering in the Redhead's ears,

"Is she gonna give us away?  Do you think she'll keep us?"  And it looks like the Redhead is whispering back, "I don't know.  I'm just trying not to think about it."

I kept them.

And this character?  What do I do with this?

It's a valentines box for receiving classroom cards.

Made out of an Oatmeal Box.

and this one...

I didn't have it  in me to toss out this part of Kate's childhood,

when she trusted me to "create" for her - oops!  I mean, with her.

See?  When the girls had a project like this....welllll....

I had a tendency to take over.  I got into the whole creativity thing and in elementary school, often, gawdy was better.  So I was able to express my inner gawdy/tacky side.  

And let me tell you something, people.

In a family of 5 women - we have the 10lb, 5lb, and 3 lb weights.

These are not all we have.  Kate took some with her to Wake.

Laura Beth has some in McDonough on the living room floor

right next to the diaper stash.

I have to step over some in the garage, gathering garage dust and debris, 

in order to make my trek to garbage cans,

walking around all the stuff we moved home from Auburn.

I'm telling you, we look like classic hoarders.

But it's getting better and we will be taking a load of stuff to New Orleans for Sarah.

So, after cleaning out the closet, I kept her bulletin board from high school,

the one that shows the 18 year old Kate - heart and soul.

I did stick up that little wooden ADPi thingy, just because,

my girls walk away from all that sorority stuff after they graduate from college,

but it was such a part of their college experience.

Good or Bad, it was.

And this wedding picture that has stood the test of time,

well,

it remains, defining Kate's style interest.

I think it does.  It was on her wall in high school.

Now it's on her closet wall .

Put there by mom, who might just be trying to hold on to a time when I had daughters living at home

under our care.

and this,

it's hanging on the opposite closet wall.

When each of the girls turned ten,

I made them a poster of the first ten years of their life.

This is Kate's.

And, finally, the clean closet, organized and not as packed.

Sarah's will be next.

I've done it before, but it needs it again.