Editing (written and otherwise)

Wardrobe editing for my children is a task I've always fervently despised and tried my best to avoid, though every so often it is a necessary evil. My major project for Memorial Day was an overhaul of my youngest child's clothes. I'd set the task over a month ago, dreading the sheer magnitude of the job.

My girls have had an excellent problem, which is that they've owned far more clothing than either will ever wear, thanks in part to hand-me-downs passed to us years ago by a friend with many sons but only one daughter (her oldest child, now in her 20s). These items of course made their way to my 10 year old via her 13 year old sister. The downside to this is that there was SO MUCH stuff clogging the dressers and closets that the girl was too overwhelmed to assemble outfits from any source except the basket of clean laundry! Hence, I spent Friday evening weeding out one of her two dressers. This, as I'd suspected, was the easier task, and was filled mostly with items she can still wear.

Yesterday was the day I tackled the remainder (WORST!) of the mission (after she left town for an overnight camping trip with her dad): her bedroom! This included gutting a second crammed-full dresser and TWO closets to sort everything into three piles: 1) too small (to be passed along), 2) too big (to be reserved for when--IF--she attains these junior sizes!), and 3) ruined (into either the trash or the rag bag). With my teenager's help I also disposed of THREE feather boas (all moulting their purple, hot pink, black, and red feathers), emptied a plastic trash bag full of clothes we found in one of the closets--which, by the way, contained items belonging to hubby and myself--and vacuumed both closets as well as the room. Two substantial boxes will be posted to my sister-in-law. The rags are in the garage. Some "hand painted" tees found their way to the trash because they were either unwearable (sticking to themselves in the drawer didn't make them inviting attire!) or incomplete, as her shirt made with my Brownie troop's co-leader last May. That shirt had a "face" painted on it for each member of the troop plus the two leaders created with flesh-tone paint applied with a potato; each child was to paint a "self portrait" onto a potato "face" (very clever and cute, BUT about seven girls weren't present for the project that day & so their "self portraits" were never added!). Since one of those girls has since moved to Cali, it's a given that the shirt never will be completed. Rather than keep the incomplete project, it was respectfully buried (along with my own incomplete shirt!).

As a result of my efforts, I'm happy to note that my daughter now has sufficient room in her closets and dressers for everything to have some breathing room! Now if we could just get her to stop growing so doggone quickly...