Attached to physical possessions much?

Today I cleaned out our closets.

When you move a lot, like we do, you can’t keep stuff. You can’t keep clothes you don’t wear, thinking you might wear them one day, or your kids might, and you don’t hang on to things “just in case,” because shipping fees are really not favorable like that.

So since we are going to the US for a year and have to pack everything away that we are not bringing, I went through all our clothes today. The idea was that we’d only keep things we were prepared to bring to the US, and anything else would have to be pretty darn special to be kept in a box. We already don’t have a lot, but this means that the few extra items that we do have, are extra hard to part with. But, you know; they're only things (or in this case, clothes). So I was doing pretty well, until I got to Maximilian’s drawer.

He’s two months old now, and it’s a steady +80 F degrees outside, which means there are clothes that he has grown out of, and there are clothes that although they fit right at the moment, he will never wear, because it’s too hot. One of these items is the very first baby suit I ever bought. I was pregnant with August, our oldest, and although I didn’t know the gender or our baby, I had a feeling it might be a boy, so I got this soft, very nice baby blue outfit at Inno department store in Leuven. I thought that even if it wasn’t a boy, a baby blue outfit would at least be an original first outfit for a girl. Well; August was a boy and he wore it all throughout those first couple of months, and then William wore it, and Abraham, and Maximilian wore it a few times before it got +80 F outside. And now, I don’t need it anymore, because I will never have a baby again that small.

And as this thought struck me, I stopped stuffing clothes into charity bags and sat down with the outfit on our bed, touching it, smelling it, and I caught myself shedding a tear. A sentimental, silly tear.

Our last baby. Ever.

No need to keep any of our baby newborn clothes any more; not even the ones that have made it all this time, through moves across three continents. The blue outfit, along with the Peter Rabbit one that my friend Ann got me; and that grey one I picked up when I was due with William – they are not needed any more, ever again, by us. 

Oh my.

Just as I looked over at the charity bag, my husband walked in and saved me, “Why don’t we keep just that one, or maybe one for each boy? They can maybe use them for their children, or if not, at least we saved the outfits for them, and they can throw them away during their own transcontinental move?”

Yes! Leave it to our kids to take care of our most sentimental items. Thank you. 

I put it in a box.

Do you keep things around? Why?