The nesting instinct

I can officially confirm that I have succumbed to the nesting instinct.

My nesting tendencies came on so gradually that I didn't distinguish them from my usual tidiness, at least in the beginning. However, my activities in the last couple of months are not normal, even for me.

Each weekend, I tackle a new area of our house, from the hidden to the in-plain-sight, and I create piles: Keep piles, Trash/Recycling piles, and Give Away piles.

Many of the items that end up in the Give Away pile are sellable, but selling an item on craigslist is time consuming. The goal of these purging exercises is to rid our home of unnecessary items as quickly as possible.

My first project was the walk-in closet in our spare bedroom, soon to be our nursery. The closet is about six-feet square, with shelving that previously held lots of our stuff. I knew that we'd need the space for baby gear, so I accepted early on that not all the treasures would be able to stay.

In general, I'm not an overly sentimental person with regard to possessions, so I was able to identify many bags full of items that I could live without. B tackled a pile that I created for him and was able to say good-bye to many of the items, as well. If we were unable to part with an item but knew that we would rarely need to use it, we packed it up and put it aside for safekeeping it in the attic above our loft or storage space in the wall behind our loft.

Speaking of the loft, it was my next project. Probably most houses have a room where stuff seems to accumulate in corners and crevices, and for us, that room is the loft. This project was particularly satisfying because I got to review over a year's worth of paper that was set aside for filing, and we didn't need to keep most of it. That's right, I got to shred, an enjoyable activity when one is nesting.

I also packed up a ton of stuff to be moved into storage, so much that we had to go buy more storage totes. When I ambushed B after work one day with the task of putting the stuff away--not as easy as it sounds, as our storage areas are difficult to access, are unfinished and unheated, and are generally unpleasant and dusty places to be--he reluctantly got out the ladder to investigate, only to declare that we didn't have enough space for all of the new storage totes.

Yes, that's right, it was another purging opportunity! He brought out everything that we had stored away, and we realized that we didn't need most of the stuff. The plastic tote full of cables that we thought we might someday use was particularly satisfying to say good-bye to. 

Our next project was the kitchen. One of the reasons we bought our condo was the surprisingly large amount of storage space in the kitchen. We have a large walk-in pantry with great Ikea shelving, a bottom-level double cabinet with lots of open space, and a corner cabinet with a narrow opening and space that goes waaaaay back.

Having a lot of storage is only helpful if you use it wisely, and we weren't. The volume of stuff we had and its lack of organization made finding frequently used items more difficult than necessary. It was time to purge.

It's not easy getting rid of kitchen equipment. You are bound to ask yourself, "What if I want this some day..." about so many items. However, facing reality and one's own limitations is helpful in the purging process. Once upon a time, I thought that having a collection of cookie cutters was part of being female. However, the reality is that I really dislike rolling out and touching dough of any kind, so becoming a mother is not likely to transform me into one of those women who bakes cookies cut from cookie cutters. And you know what? I am happier now that I have acknowledged that fact and moved on.

The kitchen reorg was a multi-day effort that involved taking everything out of its storage space, either cabinet or pantry, deciding whether to keep it, and figuring out the best place for it to live. We had to reconfigure some of the shelves in the pantry, an activity that was fun for only one of us (I suspect you can guess who).

For the keep-it-or-dump-it triage, I found that giving ourselves a few days to think about an item was helpful. We ended up finding space for quite a few items that I thought I could live without, even if we rarely or never use them. Sometimes just-in-case is a legitimate reason to keep an item.

The end result of our reorg was a pantry that we once again love. And we love it even more than we did after the first reorg before because we no longer need to keep the rolling cart that held all the spillover items. We had to remove the cart every time we wanted to access any item on the lower shelves (such a pain). Now we have no idea what to do with the cart, but we're thinking that it will likely be useful in the closet in the nursery (which is currently in disarray due to the ongoing painting project in that room, to be completed this weekend, we hope). 

I've learned a few lessons from all these exercises.

• Just because items can be organized doesn't mean that they should be organized. An organized collection of stuff you don't need is just as unhelpful as an unorganized collection of stuff you don't need.
• My impulse purchases usually eventually get donated to the Salvation Army.
• If you donate anything made after 1965 to the Salvation Army, you are a rockstar.
• The nesting instinct is merciless. Before getting rid of an item that you're on the fence about, run the idea by someone else to make sure you won't regret it later.
• Getting rid of a lot of stuff is a messy, cluttered process. The bags sit in your living room for days until you're able to make a Salvy drop. Accept that your house will be in a state of chaos until all the purging and organization is complete. The clutter has to get worse before it can get better. 
• When in doubt, pack an item away for a year or two and then revisit. If you haven't thought about it the entire time, you probably don't need it.