Out with the old and in with the new is the theme in general in January, but this year that motto finally goes as deep as our cellar.
For almost a decade we’ve been hoarding old magazines, out-of-date laptops, an old rug and various pieces of Ikea furniture. Chief among the clutter are the old toys, outgrown clothes and baby kit. We’ve been hanging onto a lot of it “just in case”, as in “just in case all the infants we know show up at once and demand highchairs” or “just in case it becomes fashionable to push a broken Maclaren around town”. So I’ve finally bitten the bullet and decided to have a real clear-out.
Right now I’m eBaying (can you remember a time when that wasn’t a verb?) a travel cot, a used mini Micro scooter and possibly the best high chair known to man. We bid farewell to the Maclaren at the tip yesterday. Once we organised the camera, the eBay login and a big bucket of soapy water to scrub up everything, putting these things up for sale was easy, yet emotional.
Of course baby clothes can be evocative, but I found the process of cleaning the high chair brought back a flood of memories. Chief among them was how shocked I was at how messy babies really are, and how easily they vomit without being bothered at all.
I was reminded of the superb nanny we had and the things she taught both of us. I recalled my daughter’s infant friends and how it feels to both fiercely love and fear your baby and her fragility.
In fact, while wiping down the tray and scraping out accumulated dust with one of our “bad” knives, it was clear to me why I had passed the highchair thousands of times before without the eBay impulse: it was still a repository for too many memories.
I think fondly of those baby days (mostly). But as we rack up more memories every week, the archive of hundreds of baby clothes and unused baby equipment doesn’t seem as essential as it did to my “parenthood experience”.
The chair and Microscooter are off to new homes, while other things are receiving a proper burial. I’m ready to let go of the baby now.
About Jennifer Howze
Jennifer Howze is the Creative Director and co-founder of BritMums. She blogs about family travel at Jenography.net, tweets at @JHowze and Instagrams at @JHowze. Previously, she wrote the Alpha Mummy blog at The Times and as a journalist has contributed to The Times, The Guardian, The Independent, The Wall Street Journal, Travel & Leisure, Budget Travel, CNN.com, Allure, SELF and Premiere, among others. She won The Maggie Award from the Planned Parenthood Federation of America for a health article in Seventeen magazine.
Jennifer Howze
Monday 9th of January 2012
Oh bitter irony! I hope you didn't then have to buy a new one. I haven't yet gone back through boxes of clothes. Those take a lot longer...
Expat Mum
Saturday 7th of January 2012
Gah - I remember how I watched our high chair going straight into the trash crushing truck/lorry (whatever you call it), after two babies had done their worst with it. As I'd been sitting on the fence about having a third, it was a painful thing to do because it made my decision to stop, that much more definite.
Who knew 7 years later I'd be begging friends for their left over baby things, - for my own use!