De-Cluttering

I am having a clear-out or clear-up.
I have always been a perpetually messy sort and I am slightly ashamed to let people into my house.


I find sort-outs quite therapeutic too and a little trip down memory lane, finding parts of you that you might have forgotten about. I have a (very large) memory box where treasured birthday cards, postcards, rambling letters and funny post-it notes from friends go. I also have the only physical token of my albeit brief courtship with Wriggles' father, when on our first date after a few glasses of wine we decided to compare handwriting on a scrap of paper. Funny the things you keep. When after a while he disappeared into the ether, or at least, stopping calling me, I meant to throw it out. Now I'm quite glad, not because I have particularly sentimental feelings about or for him, but that there is some evidence that we at least met in a not-just-procreating sense.


Amongst my mountains of things, I also have like every parent, A LOT of baby items. It always amazes me how one small person can take up so much room and acquire so many things in such a short space of time. But acquire they do! And grow, relatively quickly. I now have amongst other things a baby-seat, a moses basket and rocker, a large pram, a sling, a slightly faulty pushchair and a baby bath as well as probably hundreds of clothes, ranging from premature sizes up until 6-12 months. Some is millionth hand already, but most of it is in pretty good condition. And it is taking up room. I have already sorted out some things which have gone into a memory box for Wriggles, and kept first tiny gloves and favourite jumpers, but I am still left with a multitude of things and no one small enough to use them. Recently I began working with Tiny Lives and their Nearly New sales that raise money to support the neonatal unit where Wriggles spent the first two months of her life. In the past I have donated and sold items that I had no use for, and now I am wondering whether it is time to clear out other bits and bobs that I simply have no use for anymore. Many things have had a lot of wear as Wriggles was and is, still a titch, so over the 17 months or 15 that she has been at home with me, she still uses many things more suitable for a 9 month old. 

Big feet little feet

I've never been one of those stereotypical girls obsessed with shoes who squeals with glee everytime sparkly footwear comes into vision. I do have favourite shoes though which I were until they literally fall to pieces or I concede defeat. As a student, my mum would physically bin shoes of mine that she deemed "dead" when I went home. One time I had to travel back wearing some very old school shoes as my Converse had mysteriously "disappeared" during the course of the visit.

Brrrrr winter time

Brrr the cold snap is drawing in and I have left my gloves at the office. Silly mummy. Just before winter sets in, I get all excited and start eagerly unearthing woolly knitted items, thermals, slippers and hats from the depths of my wardrobe and Wriggles'. This is her second winter, but feels like her first as last year she was newly-home and teeny tiny, so we stayed in most of the time as she was on oxygen and it was snowing.

So this winter was full of jumpers and fleeces and still-small gloves. The latter did not last long. Wriggles is at the throwing everything stage and I have lost count of how many gloves we have lost over the side of the pushchair. Ditto hats; she will not tolerate things on her head and flings these gleefully into the road.

She does however tolerate her penguin slippers, our favourite winter accessory. These were bought from Next in December and have barely left her feet since. You can tell. They are clearly scruffy, bobbly and grubby: the marks of a well loved item! When not wearing them she will happily throw them about and share at the faces. 

For more diminutive adorable small-people winter accessories, head over to pretty.little.things this week hosted at Mummy, Daddy and Me Makes Three.
 

Showing the penguins off with Great Grandparents