The Last of the Bin

Last week we were putting away Christmas decorations, and we needed another bin. We have stuff in our attic space that has been there since we moved, and I knew we had bins we could use if we emptied them. Bryce found a bin of old binders from school to unload. 

And then I realized... I had a bin that was only about a quarter of the way full. 

What seems like forever ago, when we packed up our nursery and donated the majority of the contents, I kept a bin of things I wasn't quite ready to let go of yet. I have been slowly shedding things from that bin ever since -- books and blocks and floor puzzles and stuffies and puppets that have gone piecemeal to other friends with small children. A soft barn owl stuffed animal that now lives in my classroom and has been named Chicken Wing by this year's group of students. Receiving blankets that we repurposed around the house (great to cover office chairs or things you don't want cat hair on). 

A few years ago, I donated a bunch of baby stuff when we went to Vermont. I'd been hanging on to a bin in my car, and finally had the strength to donate it. It hurt. But I knew I had the bin left in the attic. There were still snippets. 

Now the snippets of things I can't use are gone. I emptied the bin, saving only a box of cards from our baby shower (ooof) and the sign-in book. (Although, I honestly don't really get the point of those when we have cards. It's always got 50 extra pages because we're not royalty, and I don't ever go, "oh, let's see who signed in to my event years ago!" Strange custom.) 

What's gone -- Halloween board books, the El El Frijoles onesie from Maine, the batik jellyfish onesie from the Corn Hill Festival, the Blueberries for Sal onesie someone got us, and some beautiful hand-knit items from Bryce's mom. We could hang on to them in a sealed plastic bin in a cobwebby corner of the attic space, or they could get used and worn by actual human babies. We gave the things to our lovely cleaning lady, who has a family member who's having a baby soon. 

I didn't take a picture. But then again, I feel like I have a zillion pictures. I have so much chronicled here and at My Path to Mommyhood. If I want to revisit moments and beautiful things that were never used by our mythical baby, I have lots of places to go. I don't need to keep things from having a life somewhere else. (I actually just looked at pictures from the blogs, and sure enough, the spectral version of these things live there.)

It made me a little sad, but I didn't cry. It felt more freeing than devastating. 

I feel pretty good about that.