Spring Has Sprung

Oh, how I love this time of year. The budding trees, the green grass, the chirping birds. The smell of clean air blowing in through open windows. The presence of the radiant *sun* that we've been missing for months. Ahh, glorious spring, you soothe my inner soul.

I definitely get "spring cleaning fever" this time of year. I want to organize, sort, clean and disinfect everything in the house. Looking into the closets and junk drawer(s) makes me drool. It's sick, I know.

Over the last week, I've been switching out the kids clothes from winter to summer. I emptied the drawers and closets of the clothes that don't fit my munchkins anymore, or are too warm for summer. I looked at each outfit, realizing that it might be the last time I dress one of my kids in it. And after the nostalgia wore off, I got down to business.

Since we moved into this house 13 months ago, the basement has been in a state of "being finished." Mark and his Dad have made a lot of progress, but there is still a lot to do to finish. When they started the project, they built some super-sturdy shelves in the store room. And then they packed a ton of stuff on the shelves and the floor of the store room so that they could work on finishing the rest of the basement (a rec room and an office). Now, being that I've got "the fever," I asked Mark to get down all of the kid clothes boxes so I could organize it all. It was a huge task for him to find all of the boxes (we're still currently missing one), and to haul them out, and I couldn't really help since I am not supposed to lift with my broken arm. He did it all himself, and I'm grateful.

After sorthing through everything, there were almost 10 boxes worth of hand-me-downs that I hadn't put away in the proper boxes yet, plus all of the winter clothes that needed to be packed away. And then I got the brilliant idea to relabel all of the boxes with neater labels. It was a very time-consuming task, indeed.

Now the kids' closets look neat and tidy. When all is said and done, we have [prepare yourself] fifty-nine paper boxes of kid clothes (girls up to size 6 and boys up to size 8). Before you start to wonder exactly how much Mark's salary is, realize that most of those are hand-me-downs (thanks to my sisters and Abby's birthfather's family). It's an awful lot of clothes, that's for sure. And the 59 boxes don't even include kids shoes... I guess I know what my next project is. Good thing I've still got "the fever!"