Spring cleaning.

We just started spring cleaning around here. But this is not window washing and clearing out the cupboards. Oh no, not even close!

We live in my husband's family home, which is now our home. My father-in-law left us this home, and everything in it. Everything. Is overgifting a word?

Don't get me wrong here. I am a grateful woman. I am not complaining! I have but a few genuine complaints in my life, this home is not one of them. But let me tell you, this house is full!

Full of tokens and momentos from the forty years a family was raised here. A family that included seven children. Children who loved to make art (especially pinch pots) and write books and graduate from high school and college and loved Star Wars action figures and loved books, books, books. I have evidence of all of that, right here. I even have some evidence they were, in fact, born. Birth certificates. Report cards. I know they loved their mother, I have the handmade birthday and Mother's Day cards to prove it! My mother-in-law saved everything! I have booties and silver cups and birth announcements and cards from flowers received.

I have newspaper front pages from many of our country's most historical days. Kennedy Shot. J. Edgar Hoover dies. Challenger exploded. Clinton impeached. Obama elected. And many, many days in between.

There is a lot of history in this house. There is also a lot of...junk.

Recently I walked through our back yard and found myself humming the theme to Sanford and Son. We rented a truck and said goodbye (and good riddance) to: a hot tub, a television set, a Barbie Jeep, two doors, a swimming pool, a ladder, a bike and a scooter. And that was just the back yard! From inside the house we gifted two couches. And we have three couches left. Who gives away two couches and has three left?! I'll tell you who. Pack rats.

I have silver sets and crystal sets and glassware sets. I have photos...oh good Lord I have photos in frames and in boxes and in album after album. All of these photos have been compiled on disc, saving space and posterity forever. But do I have a disc? No. I have mountains of photos.

And then there is, of course, our stuff. Everything we have collected from fourteen years of marriage and three kids. I, unlike my mother-in-law, do not save everything. Oh I have all the pinch pots, and much of the artwork. But "chuck" and I are well acquainted! You know why? Because I have learned from my dear mother-in-law. I can pitch some of the sentimentality she had to save some space. If in fact I had some space.

So I am working on Spring cleaning- deluxe. Our stuff? It's stored in the crawlspace. Crawlspace? That is what we Northern Virginians call a basement. It's a space under the house just big enough to, you guessed it, crawl through. That is always fun for the claustrophobic. I am going in. I am going to drag out everything we own that I forgot we owned and "can not live without". I am slowly replacing the history around me with little bits of myself and my family, making this house less of a museum and more our home. I am trying to gently encourage my husband's family to come collect their pieces of history. If they don't, there's always my pal "chuck".

Then, windows and cupboards...