Day 83-96: Women's clothing

Perhaps I should call this "The Great Clean-Out of Ought Seven." In which I decide to tackle the disaster that is my clothing storage situaion.

The first day i tackled this project I really thought I could get it done in a day, at most two. I merely intended to sort through my wardrobe and get rid of stuff I don't wear; how hard could it be and how long could *that* take?

Well, it turns out to be much harder than expected, and to take seven times as long as I thought. First of all, there is nothing a young child hates more than to see his mother engrossed in an activity, any activity, from the sublime (reading a fantastic, can't-bear-to-put-it-down novel) to the tedious (sorting clothes). They will do anything, and I do mean anything, to turn mama's attention back where it belongs: firmly focused on the little cherubim. Suffice it to say I was generally able to sort, organize and triage one shelf's worth of clothing at a time, and having begun a shelf I was lucky to even finish it in one session.

Since I have five cupboards with three shelves each plus one cupboard with six slide-out trays this exercise could have potentially taken 21 days to complete, but I got lucky during one afternoon when Cole took a freakishly long nap and Jack was at school. That day I managed to knock out five shelves in one session. It felt goooo-oood. I really wanted to tell people about it, perfect strangers even, but then there was no one I could think of who would recognize this for the significant accomplishment that it is, and so I kept silent.

Some days it was easy to decide what to keep and what to discard, and some it was not. I think a lot of that has to do with frame of mind; on devil-may-care days I may have tossed some things that I will ultimately regret giving away. There were a few days when almost nothing I came across seemed worth keeping, and a day or two when everything seemed too good to give up. Considering that most of my clothing was purchased at thrift stores and that I have owned much of it for a decade or longer, that second scenario is seriously unlikely.

Crappy, ill-fitting, out of style wardrobe or not, it was serious work to look at each item and decide its fate -- a process that was sometimes ridiculously difficult. Call it the tyranny of the potentially useful: for example, the grey tank top over which I agonized for a good five minutes. I had not worn in seven years, maybe even longer. But I could envision a time when i *might* wear it, and that is why it was so hard to toss it in the donation bin. Multiply that grey tank top by at least 100 other potential occasion-worthy wardrobe items and you start to get a picture of how I spent the last two weeks: standing in my bedroom, staring at my clothes.

I decided to collapse the process into one blog entry because, honestly, how much is there to say about day to day discarding of old turtlenecks? Although, on reflection, some of my own decisions surprised me: the giant, dowdy khaki shorts stayed, the hip pencil-leg J. Crew cords went. Is it a sign of maturity that I recognize comfort as being more important than style, or is this the gateway to elastic waist pants and orthopedic shoes?

In the end, I did get rid of about a third of my wardrobe. Some conclusions: I am no longer a size 4 and will never be again. I own waaaaay too much black clothing. But the ultimate question remains: How can I own so many pairs of jeans and yet not one of them makes my ass look good?

Day 82: Yet more infant toys

These are older infant toys, by which I mean toys for the year old baby and not that the toys themselves are old. Just stuff we are either no longer playing with or have multiples of. Including one of those rocking Fisher Price stacking ring toys -- you know, the ones with the fat, rainbow colored rings that stack one top of the other in graduated sizes. It's one of the most classic toys ever produced, yet FP recently stopped making it. It's not that they abandoned the concept entirely; they still make a version of it. Only this one lights up and plays music. Oy. I guess you couldn't justify more than eight or ten bucks as a price for the simple classic, while a light-up, Mozart-bleetling educational toy commands a much more lucrative amount.

Day 81: More Ebay boxes

We bought more food from our co-op, food which came in these nice boxes. More people from Freecycle are delighted to have them. Sometimes I think this whole undertaking is just too easy.

Day 80: Board Games

Board games that we never play: some kind of war themed one called "Screaming Eagles" that I bought at a yard sale because Jack spilled it on the ground and the yard sale lady was giving me the hairy eyeball. At least it was only a quarter. I paid a whole dollar for the other one, Grabbin' Dragons, which turns out to be a horrifically frustrating poorly designed exercise in failure. No way do those dragon's tails ever pick up those rings, whether you're 4 or 40.

Circa 1963 Nuttsy Tennis, however, is a keeper.

Day 12: Baby Memory Album

Rare is the extirpated baby item that does not cause at least a twinge of sentiment, but this never-used baby memory book is blank both literally and in an emotional sense for me. It's an over-the-top extravaganza of pregnancy and birth fetishization and micro-documentation (pages for baby's first thru fifth ultrasound photos!) that might have been appealing before I actually HAD a baby, much less two.

Day 78: Toddler Shoes

Unbelievably, Cole has already outgrown toddler shoes Jack was wearing at this age -- shoes that I saved, not realizing the next baby was going to be such a big'un. Guess I'd better get those 2T clothes out for my 13 month old.

If current trends progress, Cole is going to be 27 feet tall by the time he's ten.

Day 77: Baby Food Coupons

These may be the items of absolute least value that I have given away; I believe the fine print states that the value is something like 1/10th of 1 cent or something like that. I can't check because they're gone already -- they went fast. They being a dozen or so $1 off coupons for Earth's Best Baby Food that I have been cutting out of the back of Earth's Best baby cereal boxes for the past several years. I intended to use them for Cole but he eschews baby food, wanted to get right to the hard stuff.

Day 76: Car Seat Toys

I was cleaning out my car today, snowplowing out the drifts of Cheerios in the back where the boys sit, and gathered up these car seat toys. Not all are Official Baby Stimulating Edutainment Objects; some are just things Cole (and Jack) liked to fool with while strapped in to their seats. The Back Seat Boys are, alas, a fickle bunch, and the toys hold interest for such a short time. So the toys go to a new home while any useful fool-with objects -- a rubber-handled whisk, a big curly drink straw, a tennis ball -- go back to their drawers.

Day 75: More Formula

A couple more cans of formula arrived in the mail today. Formula that we will never use. By coincidence, my mom is visiting us today and can take them right back out of the house and donate them to her food bank volunteer place.

Day 74: Size 2 diapers

Cole, big for a little guy, has skipped from size two directly over size three and into size four diapers. I wanted to try to use up the rest of these 2s -- the tail end of a case that had 258 diapers in it -- but they are like little Huggies Speedos on him. I don't care that they look, as Speedos so often do, ridiculous; I'm terminally frugal and would use them up if I at all could. I do, however, care that the baby-shaped fit has been overpowered by the bigness of our baby-shaped baby so that they now leak.

Day 73: Car Seat Adapter Bar (for stroller)

Getting rid of the stroller toy yesterday reminded me of another stroller accoutrement that we no longer use and can divest ourselves of: this specialty bar that converts our stroller into a rolling carrier for the infant car seat. I'd say we aren't using it now that Cole has been out of his infant seat for, oh, three months now.

New model strollers no longer need the converter bar, since the manufacturers have figured out how to make the car seats snap in without a special adapter. Since we bought ours all of five years ago -- an aeon in the baby gear universe, it turns out -- I'm not even sure I'll be able to find anyone who needs this gizmo. It might have to wait for the stroller to go with it, and since we still use the stroller that's gonna be awhile. But I'll take a shot.

Day 72: Stroller toy bar

This was hiding in plain sight on the stroller. We went to the zoo today and I was silently cursing the stupid stroller toy bar --that the baby doesn't even fricking play with -- for making it harder to get the baby in and out of the stroller, and then realized that, duh, I can take it off. Since I am the person who put it on there. I think Jack actually played with it more than Cole did; they should maybe market the Baby Einstein Neptune Infant Carrier Musical Toy Bar to four year olds instead.

Day 71: Baby shoes and hats

Boy do we own a lot of baby stuff. I just went through the bin of sun protection gear and realized that Cole had outgrown most of his current hats, plus for some reason there were shoes in the bin that technically could be regarded as sun gear but really I think I just threw in there during some frantic cleaning spree, just to make them go away. So go away they shall.

Day 70: Bibs, socks, etc.

The discovery of yesterday's baby blanket cache led me to search through the nether regions of our baby regalia storage space, and I came up with all sorts of newborn stuff. Bibs -- almost totally unused, since neither of our kids was a drooler and we used disposables for dining. Adorable, eentsy socks, which I tried not to coo over too much as I packed them up, lest the power of cuteness overcome the momentum to get rid of them. Also some cute sun hats, mostly outgrown before they ever had a chance to shelter either of my sons' fuzzy little newborn heads from the sun.

Day 69: Baby Blankets

For reasons I do not understand, baby blankets are a very popular baby shower gift. Maybe everyone else just knows something I don't, but I never figured out how to use them for all that much. Aside from a favorite few we swaddled the guys with when they were first hatched, most of our battery of blankies remained on a high shelf, unused. I'm keeping a couple I'm fond of. No need to get all extreme with the getting rid of stuff, though the boys' memory boxes are each getting pretty full at this point...

Day 68: Playskool baby walker/ride on toy

Although this would be a natural donation to the parents' center I am offering this first on Freecycle since I obtained it from Freecycle and the notion of tossing a Freecycle belonging back into the Freecycle fray is too appealing to pass up. We haven't actually taken much from Freecycle, and we really use the few things we've obtained that way, so this might be my only chance (aside from the serendipitous reconnection between our baby clothes and the lady that once gave us a swing set, see day 9).

Honesty might not be the best policy here, however; had the original Freecycler been more forthcoming about the rather beat up condition of this toy I probably would not have bothered to go get it (or, more correctly, have my brother go get it, since it turned out to be located a block from his office). It worked out fine; even though it's not pretty we just used it outside for Cole to stagger around with while he was learning to walk. I outlined all this in my Freecycle post and so far no interested parties.

It's OK, I have a backup plan for the toy -- if no one wants it I am going to take it to the local tot lot and donate it to the scrum of well-used toys others have left there. I know it will find some action at the tot lot, since it was there -- watching Cole gleefully push around a similarly decrepit Playskool walker -- that I got the idea to look on Freecycle for a walker WE could leave outside in our very own yard.

Day 67: Another (!) Breast Pump

Avent Isis manual breast pump. Barely used, since it didn't work for me. Hopefully its new owner will have more cooperative breasts.

Day 66: Video Baby Monitor

Got this as a shower gift before Jack was born, it is a tiny black and white tv monitor on which you can observe your sleeping baby on a fuzzy, snowy screen. It makes them look like the world's tiniest bank robbery suspect. Essentially this is a surveillance camera, but we never really used it. The regular just plain sounds baby monitor worked for us because a sleeping baby tends to just, you know, sleep. Didn't make for very exciting viewing.

Day 65: Box of Small Toys

Box of toys that have been sitting around various places in the house not being played with: a couple of toy trucks, some bristle blocks, stuffed caterpillar of unknown provenance, etc.

Day 64: Computer Processor/Heat Sink

This big hunk of metal has been sitting next to my desk ever since my brother replaced some of my Mac's innards. I thought it was just there until I got around to finding out how to recycle it but it turns out it is still useful -- and not even as a paperweight but as an actual computer component. It is a mark of what a deep technonerd my brother is that he just assumed all humans would know this just by looking at said hunk of metal, and so I gave it to him to use. Presumably as something other than a rather unwieldy but interesting-looking paperweight.

Day 63: Photo Albums

Just a couple of those blank stick-to-the-pages photo albums someone gave me, can't remember who. They are really bad for storing photos in, archivally speaking, so I will never use them. Another one of those hiding in plain sight objects, I found them lurking on a book shelf while I was searching for my copy of Flannery O'Connor's short stories. (It's been a weird day and I have a hankering to read "Everything That Rises Must Converge").

Day 62: Magazines

Dropped off a bunch of recent issues of various magazines at the local Y's fitness center, where we (very) occasionally work out. Whenever I'm hunting for elliptical machine reading material the magazine rack there always seems to offer a bunch of two year old "Golf Digests" and a single fairly current issue of "People" so handled that the paper feels like limp chamois. I could have just recycled these Vanity Fairs and New Yorkers, as I have generally done in the past, but in the spirit of putting objects with continued value and usefulness into the hands of those who would use them I thought of that sad Y media rack. This may be the one time I actually deliver anything in the name of Impedimenta.

Day 61: Jigsaw puzzles

I get this odd urge, every now and then, to fully immerse myself in doing a jigsaw puzzle. When the urge presents itself I take over the dining room table with whatever 2500 piece monster I can get my hands on and spend days devoting every possible moment to sorting, matching and puzzling over it. I think only of the puzzle. When I am cooking, driving the car, standing in the shower, I am thinking about the puzzle. I stay up insanely late, working the puzzle. And then the puzzle is complete and the spell snaps and I am myself again. It happens maybe a couple times a year.

I have three of these former obsession puzzles sitting around, with all the pieces -- since I wouldn't do that to a fellow jigsaw puzzler, knowingly present them with a puzzle maddeningly missing one or more of its parts -- but despite my fierce temporary dedication to each of them they mean nothing to me new.

Day 60: Women's shoes

So I was hunting for a pair of shoes in my half of the bedroom closet today and realized I could not find the shoes I was looking for because there were all these OTHER shoes I didn't want, getting in the way. So I very quickly and easily sorted out six pairs I never wear: two pairs of slippers (both well intentioned xmas gifts), some way cool Converse fish head sneakers I love but realistically will never wear again due to advanced age and fallen arches, and do you really care what the other three pairs were?

Day 59: Homeopathic Tinctures

Black and blue cohosh. You'd think they'd be for treating bruises, but the black is for supporting female hormonal balance and the blue is for smooth muscle relaxation. I had them to support late pregnancy and labor, just in case -- black is supposed to get labor going in the final week of pregnancy, blue is emergency jump-start to a stalled labor -- but labored and delivered without need of them. I have offered these to my crunchy mamas listserv with no takers and will now put them on Freecycle.

Day 58: Queen sheets

Queen size sheets, that is. Not sheets with Queen on them (though I'm sure die-hard Freddie Mercury fans have these), nor are they sheets we save for the specific occasion wherein female royalty comes to spend the night at our house.

Another hiding in plain sight item: we got a king size bed (counting on fingers) four years ago and have been shuttling the queen sized sheets to the back of the linen cupboard ever since. We have a queen sized guest bed, so after setting aside two sets for that we still have four to spare. Entire flat/contour/pillowcases sets, soon to be gone to someone who may or may not be royalty but at least has a queen sized bed they use.

Day 57: More women's clothing

Had a spare moment and cleaned out one of my shirt shelves. Our house features built-in cabinets in the bedroom, an entire wall full, so we don't have dressers, just a series of small closets into which we cram our clothes. Haphazardly. I have a couple of shelves, ok, FOUR shelves, dedicated to shirts. Out of the top shelf, the only one I had a chance to sort and organize before the baby started trying to haul himself up my leg (all the better to find my breasts -- it was time to nurse, apparently) I got rid of almost all of the shirts therein. It seems I hate my clothes. Or at least, that I have an awful lot of shirts that I never wear and don't really like. One shelf down, four to go. Hopefully after I get done going through my shirt shelves I will still have some. Shirts, that is.

Day 56: Bag o' Infant Toys

Lordy, these just keep turning up everywhere. All kinds of brightly colored of developmentally appropriate gewgaws for the stroller, for the car seat, for the high chair. Who knew babies were so bored as to require a fleet of stimulating toys for every conceivable occasion? As a new parent I bought into the idea of every infant waking moment being an opportunity to nurture thicker, bushier dendrites and so purchased all kinds of these toys. Then I realized babies really just want to hang out, stare at things, maybe blow some spit bubbles while contemplating their toes. Those well-intentioned toys just dangle there, ignored. So here they go, out the door for some other baby to ignore.

Day 55: Baby Bathtub

This baby bathtub totally represents an "Aha!" moment for me in terms of giving stuff away.

I have been feeling a little uneasy, wondering when it was going to start getting hard, triage-ing our belongings with an eye to giving them away. When will the day come when I can't find anything I am willing to part with -- sooner, or later? Either way I know, day 55 or 155 or 355, it will come.

Or will it? This morning I was gathering up clothes to launder -- a neverending supply around here, it's like the dirty clothing fairy visits us each evening, sprinkling small soiled garments about the house -- and scooped an armload out of the baby bathtub. Since we no longer use it to give the not-really-a-baby-anymore his bath it's become a de facto clothes hamper in the bathroom. As I stooped to scoop it hit me -- we don't use this object for its intended purpose, have not used it in at least six months, so why the hell is it taking up so much valuable bathroom real estate? Easy enough to give away, we certainly shall not miss it, and in going it will actually help keep the bathroom tidier (assuming we manage to get the clothes to the real clothes hamper in the bedroom). Also a perfect item for the Young Parents' Support Center donation-slash-invisibox.

Thus I am feeling much perkier about giving this bathtub away than giving away a baby bathtub ought to make one perk. I now suspect there could be all sorts of impedimenta -- objects which impede or encumber, people! -- all about the house, hiding in plain sight. It's just that they have become such a part of the home landscape that my eye passes over them, unquestioning. From now on I will have eyes that ask questions. At least in the morning, when I like to get the whole giving an object away thing done first thing.

Day 54: French Press coffee pot

I have had this French press for well over a decade, and it's been at least 8 years since I used it. Even though I'm sort of a coffee snob, frankly I'm a little too lazy for all the nit-picky cleaning the French press requires. I mean, the cup of joe it brews is not THAT much better than steadfast, easy-to-wash Mr. Coffee. So it goes, a relic of days when I had time to do for the daily dismantling and cleansing of intricate gourmet devices.

Day 53: Baby Bjorn

We do own a rather shocking number of things in multiples, but devices for schlepping babies has got to be the category killer. Not only do we have two Baby Bjorn infant carriers, we also have two Maya slings, an Ergo carrier, a Hip Hammock, two mei tie wraps and an aluminum frame baby backpack. (Until recently we also had a Moby wrap, a New Native pouch, and a third Maya sling, but I sold those to finance my ongoing baby carrier addiction).

I can make a case for keeping some of them, because each carrier works best in different situations and so it's good to have a selection. We are using the Maya wrap and Ergo every day, and I keep an extra Maya in the car because it stores well and is there in a pinch in case I forget to bring a carrier when we go out. The backpack is essential for actual hiking, which we do often enough to justify keeping it.

The others, though, are candidates for passing on. Now that Cole has outgrown the front carry we no longer need either Bjorn; I'm not crazy about the Hip Hammock, so that can go; one mei tie is going into Cole's memory box but the other can be given away. (I plan to hold that one for a couple of months since it is Xmas themed and it will likely have more appeal closer to December, plus it's polar fleece and too darned hot for summer anyway).

So I pick the older Bjorn to be the first to go. We haven't used it since Jack was a baby, since the newer Bjorn has better back support, and the other ones could at least in theory still be used to help lug around all 22 pounds of Cole, especially if we want to have a little christmas in August.

I don't want to be disingenuous about this so I feel like I have to go on record stating that I might not give away all of the remaining carriers: I might sell some of them. I feel a little weird putting that in a blog that's ostensibly about giving things away, but we put a lot of money into acquiring these things and they do have resale value. I mean, we paid $75 for the Bjorn I am giving away today, and I know they can be sold used on Ebay. But I also feel good about giving it because I feel so strongly about the benefits of babywearing, and I'm hoping someone at the Young Parents' Support Center who might not otherwise have tried wearing their baby will take the Bjorn and keep their babe close instead of carrying them around at arm's length in the ubiquitous baby bucket-slash-infant car seat.

Day 52: Lactation Herbs

So this has got to be one of the more esoteric Impedimenta offerings: false unicorn root, anyone? I bought a bunch of bulk herbs awhile back to make my own lactation support tea, since we spend a small fortune on Traditional Medicinals Mother's Milk tea bags. I'm not really a tea person, though, and after a couple of weeks of mixing the herbs and infusing them in the tea ball for the different times that are supposed to be most beneficial for each herb I thought, to heck with this, and broke out a new box of Mother's Milk.

Offered to the online mom's group. So far no takers. I think it's because I'm specifying that you must take all of them; last time I offered herbs, it took a couple of weeks to get rid of them because someone wanted the raspberry leaf but not the stinging nettle, someone else could use the licorice bark, etc. etc. No way am I dealing with the emails and dropoff arrangements to find homes for a dozen different herbs again. Not to mention what our mail delivery person must have thought, stopping by our mail box (I often stick stuff in there for people to pick up, so they don't have to deal with our dog) to drop the mail only to find a baggie of mysterious shredded green leafy substance. Suuuuure it's just milk thistle....

Day 51: Mailing Boxes

The USPS should pay me a commission for this one. These boxes accumulate rapidly around here because we get a weekly food shipment in them and I'm slow to break them down for recycling. I was about to start stomping the latest batch today in preparation for recycling day tomorrow when I realized that they might be more useful un-stomped. They're very nice plain brown Uline boxes in small and medium sizes, very useful for say Ebay sellers.

So I posted them on Freecycle and got a number of enthusiastic responses. It seems many people are doing that Ebay thang these days. I felt bad I couldn't help them all out, so wrote back to each person telling them about the free priority mail boxes and other shipping supplies you can get from the USPS website. And those are delivered free, right to your door, as opposed to you having to drive all the way up here to the cul-de-sac to get mine.

Day 50: PediPeds infant shoes

Boring: Cole outgrew these just this week, we bought him new shoes, plenty of life in these yet, passed them on to a woman from my online parenting group.

Day 49: Blender

Y'know, I better check with Alan before consigning this to the InvisiBox, because the firm InvisiBox rule is No Backsies. Once an item goes in there, it's as good as gone. And just like the tea kettle (see day 47) this is a venerable item of kitchenware with possible backstory. I need to check but I think this might be the blender A. and his pal Chip took to Bonaire like 20 years ago and used to make fruity drinks for other tourists to the extent that they became known as The Blender Guys. Or maybe it's not. Anyway, we just don't use it any more, we have another blender, it hasn't blended anything in probably 7 years and it's time for it to move on.

Postscript: Alan: Blender? We have another blender? You mean besides the one in the kitchen?

Case closed.

Day 48: KinderMusik books & cds

Ooh, this can start to get a little uncomfortable, this public parading of stuff and what getting rid of it says about us. These books and cds can go on display in the Museum of Good Intentions, Parenting Wing: I was going to sit down with Jack and do these little musical lessons every day. I really was. And then we didn't. I tried a few times but the books were confusing and our cd player is a pain in the ass to use and nobody was having any fun with it, so I think on like the third day we went outside to make mudpies instead. So Jack might not have much in the way of rhythm, thanks to his slacker no KinderMusik-doin' mama, but my boy CAN pack one heck of a mud pie.

When these turned up this morning in our entertainment center cabinet while I was searching for "The Jungle Book" dvd that was not in its case, I sort of automatically put them aside. Despite the fact it's been at least three years since their last spin in our cd player I thought, "Oh! I'll use these with Cole!" and set them down...but before I could even draw my hand away second-thought, "No, you won't." And picked them back up again, this time to go to the InvisiBox.

Once upon a time I would have kept the stuff, left it to gather dust, rather than admit that the little stack of brightly colored materials represented wasted money and unfulfilled intentions. Doing Impedimenta has become such an automatic habit these days that I don't really spend much conscious thought contemplating how it might be affecting me, but this was a clear example of purging something that once upon a time I would have allowed to lounge about our home indefinitely, despite its lack of appeal.

(Interesting unrelated note regarding the difference between 'intent' and 'intention': intent implies a sustained unbroken commitment or purpose, while intention would imply an intermittent resolution or an initial aim or plan. Thesaurus.com only recognizes 'intent' as a word, however, having no entries for 'intention').

Day 47: Tea Kettle

I am unsure of where on the "talk to me before you give my stuff away" spectrum this falls, but Alan has owned this red enamel tea kettle for a couple of decades. I'm not sure but it might have been a wedding gift for his first marriage (1985). However, we haven't used it in 7 years. It's perfectly nice and deserves a new home where someone will use it, without secret uncomfortable knowledge of its wedding-gift-to-a-former-wife past everytime they go to make a fricking cup of tea.

Day 46: Doll High Chair

About two feet tall. Wooden. High chair for a doll. Have no idea in hell how it got here.

Day 45: Mini Golf game

Some toys, you think they're going to be a huge hit. Tons of fun. Hours of entertainment. And then the kid just could not be less interested. This miniature golf set -- three holes! make the gopher pop out of his hole! spin the windmill! -- still seems like a natural. I mean, Jack loves to play actual mini golf. But home mini golf, not so much. Perhaps some other child will share my enthusiasm...

Day 44: Mini Aquarium and Fish Supplies

Gave these to one of the moms on BaltAP, the Yahoo group for Baltimore-area attachment parenting folks that I belong to. I had inherited them from my brother, who had fish for his kids, with the intent of getting a fish or frog for Jack for his birthday. But given my inability to take care of one more living thing beyond the 4 humans and one canine in our family, adopting another animal is not a good idea -- I mean, you should see my poor house plants. Seriously, I just can't do it: the feeding, the tank maintenance, the feeling guilty when the latter doesn't get done and the fish lives in thick scum. I am refusing to be fish-whipped.

And neither can Jack, realistically, handle it, not for a few more years anyway. He still doesn't understand why he can't take the fish out of the little pond at Nanu's house and play with them, something he tries to do every time he thinks he can get away with it. So it actually would be cruel for us to get a fish for him -- for the fish, not for Jack. Like some sort of aquatic Guantanamo Prison, complete with constant harassment by a well-meaning four year old bent on loving it to death. So bye-bye, fish tank, I'm giving you away to save us from being haunted by the ghosts of departed pets. Because you know once one died, we'd have to replace it. Or, as David Sedaris once described the revolving roster of pets in his childhood home, "another day, another collar."

Day 43: Six Kodak Slide Carousels

You know, those round trays that go on top of slide projectors. They hold the slides that are, say, the photos from your Aunt Gloria's trip to Switzerland back in '73. I have a ton of these, back from when I used to teach college photography and used them for illustrating my lectures. Even then slides, once the absolute gold standard for image sharpness and color fidelity. were becoming a rarity. In the six short intervening years since I last taught these slide trays have gone from essential to extraneous, since now I use a digital projector for such things.

I offered these on Freecycle thinking that I would be lucky to find anyone who even knows what they are, much less who has a use for them, but was pleasantly surprised to get quite a few requests. I gave them to a woman who wants to organize her grandparents' decades worth of slides and produce a slide show for her family.

When you get right down to it I don't know why I don't give away my remaining slide trays (I held onto 4) and the projector. I don't use them, and don't really discern any use for them in the forseeable future. It would be good to get these things out there while someone can still use them. But I'm not seriously considering doing this. I don't own my own digital projector, so there could be some farfetched scenario where I still need to give a slideshow on short notice and would need this nice old analog one. Plus I'm sentimentally attached to it, having found it in a New Mexico thrift store for $8 -- a steal, back then, for a professional projector -- and lugged it back to Maryland in the overhead compartment on the airplane. I am justifying its ongoing tenure in my studio based on two criteria: one, I'm a sucker for analog photo technology, and believe the occasional self-indulgence is OK; and two, maybe I can do some sort of arts and crafts thing with it with the boys some day -- making silhouettes or something. At the very least Jack would have a ball playing with it. So it stays. For now.

Day 42: Boys 4T clothing

In an unprecidented burst of organizational momentum I sorted and packed up Jack's outgrown 4T winter clothing today. I limited the stash to one 25 gallon plastic tub, saving the best for Cole and recycling a few hopelessly stained things to our rag bag. The rest is in the InvisiBox.

Sometimes I wonder if having two rapidly growing boys makes the Impedimenta thing too easy. But then I realize one major reason we have so much STUFF is because we have two rapidly growing boys. Caveat emptor.

Day 41: Women's clothing

Every Impedimenta day should be this easy: a bag of clothing I sorted out of my wardrobe earlier this year, stashed to be donated wherever and whenever the opportunity arose. I just found it and started to go through it, thought about pulling out this one natty J. Crew merino wool turtleneck I don't remember why I put in there, and then sanity prevailed. I have way too many clothes, and clearly have not been missing whatever was exiled to this bag. Tied the bag top shut and plopped it into the InvisiBox.

(It late occurred to me that the J. Crew turtleneck is in there because, cute as it is, it ends right where my muffintop begins. In case you're not hip to the lingo, muffintop is that adorable ring of flesh that laps lightly over the top of your pants waist once you have two kids and then hit 40 no matter how many damned crunches you do).

Day 40: Box of misc kitchen stuff

Forgot to mention that the flatware sat around the studio kitchen area until I excessed it -- my cousin doesn't want it, and we don't need it. The miscellaneous kitchen stuff also came from the studio kitchen and is so boring I can barely write about it: Tupperware, a spoon rest. The only item of note is a tan plastic pitcher with brown lid decorated with a Revolutionary War scene; it's so ugly it's almost impressive. (Almost). Alan received this nearly three decades ago for opening a bank account (remember the Bicentennial? That explains the Spirit of 76 theme) and it has been hiding in the back of various cupboards ever since. Until today.

Day 39: Flatware

So last Thanksgiving my grandma had dinner on my cousin's boat, and was scandalized that he and his wife served the meal partially using plastic cutlery and paper plates because they own, like, two place settings: one for each of them. That was her version, I have not verified this with my cousin, but Gram did keep going on about it until one day she spotted this flatware set in the dumpster at her retirement community and pulled it out to give to Val, and for some reason she gave it to me to give to him even though I only ever see him on major holidays. It's fuzzy, maybe he was coming over to my house for some reason.

A note on the dumpster at my grandmother's retirement community: this receptacle has done well by our entire family. I always checked it whenever I visited Gram because people were always moving out of there, to nursing homes or whatever, and their families generally dumped all kinds of perfectly useful stuff. We never understood why they didn't donate it; they don't even put things next to the dumpster for people to take, it all just gets heaved in there. Anyway, I have scored tons of great items from there, including duckpin bowling balls, cool old board games, and vintage clothing. My family goes more for useful items and has recovered dishware, lamps, an ironing board, small appliances, and even a miraculously unbroken full length mirror.

When Gram died in March, my Mom had 30 days to clean out her apartment. I promise that not one item that was not actually garbage went into the dumpster. It's probably a good thing, Impedimenta-wise, that I no longer have regular contact with the Dumpster of Endless Bounty.

Day 38: Mega Blocks Princess Castle Building Set

I'm pretty relaxed about gender-bending toys with our boys -- Jack has a dollhouse, and I've always secretly hoped that they'll want to play dress up at some point. So I had no problem accepting this girlie Mega Blocks building set from a friend whose daughter outgrew it; it made a cool castle, so who cared if it was pink?

Well, Jack does. I kept trying to get him to build the castle with me, and he kept not wanting to do it, until one day he finally blurted out, Mama, that is for GIRLS. I guess I shouldn't be surprised; I tried to get him to watch Cinderella with me, back when he was barely three and should have been still oblivious to the difference between the sexes. But I couldn't even take the DVD out of the package before Jack nixed it as being a girl movie, not for big guys like him.

And so we build castles out of blocks that come in cheerful primary colors, and this set languished. I could hold onto it for Cole, see if he's more willing to cross the pink divide, but we have enough toys. Too many. This one's gotta go. To the InvisiBox! (I keep saying that whenever I'm rooting out stuff to divest, trying for a debonair Adam West "To the Batcave!" kind of vibe, and then I crack up laughing. I really, really, really need to get out more).

Day 37: Bag of Baby Toys

For some reason, giving away this bag of assorted baby toys registers not even a blip on the verklempt-o-meter. You'd think I'd be all misty about these various baby stimulating and entertaining toys that I so earnestly researched and purchased in the name of maximizing Jack's, and then Cole's, every waking infant second. The thing is, though, that my boys pretty much rejected any Official Baby Toy in interest of crumpled up paper, toothbrushes, electric cords (plugged in, of course). Oh, they'd play desultorily with a baby toy if strapped into a car seat and given no other choice, but really they preferred the toilet brush, thank you.

So. No particular sentimental attachment to these, so off to the InvisiBox with nary a second thought.

Day 36: Infant Car Seat

Back when Jack was just a little older when Cole is now there was a moment I got all tearful in Target because I realized that I no longer had any reason to go in the baby section: Jack had graduated from all the teeny tiny clothes and cute, cheerful infant parapharnalia. At least back then I could comfort myself with the knowledge that we were planning another baby. Now that, realistically, we are done having babies around here (I say realistically because I would dearly love to have a third child, but two seems like more than we can handle some days) moments like these are not so easy to soothe.

Thus I was once again verklempt, this time over a truly uninspiring navy blue Graco Snugride plastic infant car seat. There are millions exactly like it, give or take the fabric design. Ours was "Princeton", a jazzy navy, white and gold plaid with an official Princeton University seal emblazoned thereon. I picked out the threads and pulled the Princeton patch off, since I find the generic commercialized Ivy League worship it embodied ridiculous. (OUR kids are going to Hopkins, if they can pay for it that is -- better start checking those classifieds, boys! Only 13 years to save up for college, Jack, and that tooth fairy money isn't going to do it...) A baby shower gift from my mother.

Anyway, the seat has another 8 or 9 months of life left in it before the manufacturer's expiration date on the bottom (bet you didn't realize these things expire, huh?) and I am happy that someone might be able to use it, since it served so well to protect and carry my two beloved baby guys. It's just that no more baby car seat means no more babies, so leave me to my quiet little sniffles.

Day 35: Breast Pump

Oh, man, I can hear the cries of "Ew, sick" from here, but today's InvisiBox item is a breast pump.

Now before you get all grossed out, consider that it's only the pump unit, and that each individual user has personal collection bottles/tubes/funnels that only ever touch the milk and their, um, own personal breasts. All the pump does is create the air vaccuum that draws forth the breast milk, but never actually comes in contact with the milk. This is a nice Medela Mini Electric single pump that costs about $80, in its original box with all the accessories. I have graduated to a double pump, thank you.

(I just never thought I would ever end up discussing my breast pump status in a public forum, but here you go. Enjoy!)

Day 34: Tricycle

OK, so it's a little big for the InvisiBox, so I am stashing this, the first item given away in this new system of giving, NEXT to the InvisiBox. It's a tricycle, not much to say about it except that it's one of our rather embarrassingly large fleet of kiddie ride-on toys. I hope the new owners appreciate its unironic EIghties majesty: a couple years ago we got this free from a nearby yard sale; the proprietors insisted Jack take it. Their late-teens son was sitting there and they mentioned it had been his. It is electric lime green with Miami Vice-worthy squiggles of hot pink and neon orange. You need sunglasses merely to look at it. Ray Bans, of course.