This nest really is empty.
Last weekend you took your younger daughter to her college campus 12 hours south. Your older daughter has one year left to get her nursing degree, but she is living on campus herself. In an effort to stay busy while it is just you and your husband at home you have picked up number of substitute teaching jobs, but there are still many long evenings and even longer weekends. You have several long weekend trips planned, but you do not want to feel like you have to travel to keep yourself busy. As a result, you have decided that you are going to finally finish the basement and create an entertainment space that the whole family will enjoy the next time you all end up in the same space. You and your husband are also both looking forward to having some friends and family over for dinner, or a simple movie.
Before the basement work can begin, however, you need to make sure that there is room for the renovations. This means that you will need to spend a good deal of time going through old boxes of clothes and other childhood memories of when the nest was a lot less empty.
What Will You Keep When You Need to Get Rid of All the Clothes Your Children Used to Wear?
Whether you are looking to clean up the basement so you can work on getting the space renovated or you are planning to make a little extra cash from a garage sale, there comes a time when you need to sort through the things that you have. How Many pair of warm baby shoes and toddler snow boots can you possibly keep? Some of us are very good at sorting through items as soon as they are no longer being worn, while others love to hold onto everything. At some point, however, you will likely face a time when you need to decide to keep the high end baby blankets, but get rid go the inexpensive baby warps that made a few too many trips to the grocery store.
Having an eye for what you shop keep and what you should toss is not always easy, but in a time when many people have entire closets and dressers exploding with keepsakes, sorting out older items is necessary. Fortunately, if you limit yourself to just a few special items you can feel really good about the other things that you no longer need. By donating, for instance, you can rid yourself of some items that really are just taking up space. And if you are lucky enough to have the best cashmere baby blanket, there is a chance that you can sell it for a nice profit.
When families are first having babies, they are given any manner of gifts. From the luxury baby gifts that your boss’s wife gifts you to the four pair of warm baby shoes that you found on sale, you can end up with way too many items than make any sense. Of course, you want to save special family keepsakes for your own children, and it makes sense to make sure that you save nice pieces of clothing for future children, but when you are an empty nester the time has come to make some decisions.
High End Baby Gifts Hold Their Value on the Secondary Market
Four pair of the same warm baby shoes that you found on clearance can simply be donated or thrown on a garage sale; expensive items like premium baby gifts can be kept or resold. At some point, however, you need to make some choices. You cannot finish your basement if it is full of boxes or warm baby shoes, coats, and sweaters. Reality is that In 2015 nearly 70% of mothers with kids under 18 worked in the labor force in the U.S. In fact, in 46% of households with tow parents in the U.S., both parents work full-time jobs. This often means that parents have more disposable income than previous generations may have had.
Are you are ready to sort through your memories and your child’s clothes?