Regrets. I've had a few.

So. The weather is not conducive to Mom going home this weekend as planned, so we have another Christmas Miracle headed our way!

This has seriously been the best Christmas ever! 


Also, the pressure is off, because the in-laws won't be stopping by after all. The Hubster doesn't have any time available to take off work, and Bugster can't miss out on her externship, so they decided they'll just see us this summer.

I've been working on the laundry for the last several days. Mom made the comment that I'd done more laundry than a laundromat sees in a month, and while it wasn't quite that much there was a lot of laundry. I lost count of how may loads I did, but there were at least 50 loads just in the last week.


I washed everything from sweaters to backpacks to coats to gloves and mittens to baby clothes to baby socks, bibs and blankets. Then I sorted them and either put them away, put them in storage, gave them to friends, or bagged them up to be donated. In fact, I dropped off 23 bags of clothes and gently worn shoes and 2 boxes to the local thrift store.

I will never have to deal with them again, and I couldn't be more relieved.

It's hard work.


Not the laundry itself. Well, I suppose doing 50+ loads this last week hasn't really been easy, but I do enjoy doing laundry, so it wasn't as bad as it could have been. But the laundry that is so hard to deal with is the stuff that tugs at the heartstrings. It's hard to say goodbye. 


Like the sweatshirt that I made when Bugster was little. I made one for The Hubster, myself and each grandparent. They said "Bugster loves ______!" with the blank filled in with Gramma, Grampa, Mommy or Daddy. I have hung onto ours for the last 22 or 23 years. Bugster will be 24 next week, so we've had them since she was just tiny. And yesterday, I took the step to cut Hubster's sweatshirt up, threw the front of it in the trash and put the rest in the rag basket. 


It was so hard to making the decision. I felt like I was throwing away a piece of Bugster's childhood. But once the decision was made, and the deed was done, I felt liberated. 

Free.

That is until I started sorting through the baby clothes and blankets I'd saved back for Bugster and Bubster for their babies should they want to use them to try and pare them down. Some of the decisions were easy. I saved the beautiful knit baby blanket my sister had made for Bugster and some beautiful little outfits that both sets of grandparents had given the girls. Most still looked new.

But I got rid of a couple of other beautiful hand-knit blankets that were given to us when Bugster was born that we never used. Our girls have very sensitive skin, and some of the yarn used to knit the blankets was just plain itchy. I didn't use the blankets on the girls, because I didn't want to make them miserable with itchiness, but I didn't know how to get rid of them. After all, they were given in love, and somehow, getting rid of them felt like I was throwing that love away. Dismissing it. 


Still. I did make the very hard decision to give them away.


And then guilt set in. Guilt over the fact that the little things still looked new. Guilt that I hadn't let them wear the outfits often enough for them to even look worn. But they were all so special to me, that I saved them for 'special occasions'. The problem was that it never seemed like occasions were quite special enough to wear the outfits, so some of them had only been worn once or twice before they were outgrown. 


The regret weighed heavily on my all day long.

To top it off, my arms ached from missing the babies they used to hold. I can't seem to wash baby clothes without feeling and smelling the little ones who used to wear them as though they're still asleep in the other room waiting for me to rock them and hold them and love them.


Sigh.

It's been a rough week emotionally. But I made it through. 


I'm down to only having 2 loads of laundry left from the huge amount of clothing that had been in the storage pod. The other 2 loads I have waiting to be run are towels and dark clothes that are clothes that we currently wear. It's hard to believe that after 10 years or so of trying to sort through the laundry that seemed so impossible, I'm almost done. 

For the first time in over a decade, I will finally be caught up on laundry when I go to bed tonight. I will have 9 empty laundry baskets and 2 empty hampers in the laundry room. At least 4 large boxes that had held laundry that have since gone out with the trash, and there are at least eight 18 gallon totes that once held dirty laundry that are now stacked awaiting their next purpose. 

I've been stretched mentally and I have survived. I have not been incapacitated by emotions like I have in the past. 


It is a small victory, but it is a victory nonetheless. 


I'll count it as a win.