Nice Empty Space

A few weeks ago I did a brave thing. I ventured into our basement and pulled out ALL of Aidan's baby, toddler and preschool stuff. Mind you, this stuff has been stored for nearly 8 years - so what a task this was. Of course I enlisted the help of my mom as no one else would work as hard and do as thorough of a job as her, let alone WANT to help me!

Step 1 was to sort through all the boy clothes and pick out gender-neutral goods for the baby girl on the way. We found a few things that will help...

Step 2 was to bag up the boy stuff and pass them on to younger cousins. (Note how many bags of clothes I saved from Aidan! There were 20!)

Step 3 was to wash all the zero to six month clothes, blankets, bibs and other baby wear and store them in baby's room. Future sizes will be stored in a plastic bin in our closets as NO MORE kid stuff will be kept in the basement again.

Step 4 was to sanitize the small toys in either a sink of bleach water or the dishwasher. For all the fabric toys, diaper bags and cloth stuff, I even ran them through the washer and dryer! I spread out a large blanket in my drive-way and let the items "bake" in the sun to ensure they were thoroughly dry and clean. Surprisingly, everything turned out perfect, just like new!

Step 5 was to clean all the big stuff (large toys, play pen, stroller, high chair, etc.) outside using a hose and a big bucket of sudsy water. We picked a hot day so Aidan could have some water fun too!

What's next .... my sweet cousins and friends have shared their girly clothes with us! I had no idea this PINK stuff would evoke so many "Aaaaahs"! It's been fun to sort through. Now I am repeating Step 3 and will start to organize all of baby's stuff into her new room.

All said and done, I feel more ready for baby and really love a nice, empty space in our basement!