Real Life: How does this happen?

How does a family accumulate THIS quantity of outgrown clothing in just 3 years?!

And this doesn't even include the bags and bags and bags of clothing we've periodically donated to Goodwill over the years. It just doesn't make sense to me! I mean, I know I've got four kids. And one of them is a giant "child" who's stretched from a tall 10 year old when we got to Hawaii into a gargantuan, man-sized, towering 13 year old now, having seemingly blazed through entire size stages in a week at some points in time. And another of them is a girl. The only girl in a family with three big brothers. So it probably goes without saying that she has what might be described as a plethora of clothing. ("I would not like to think that a person would tell someone he has a plethora, and then find out that that person has no idea what it means to have a plethora..." Gold star to the first person to identify the quote!) Add to those two clothing-collecting scenarios the fact that every kind and generous person we know likes to donate their second-hands in our direction (which we are ALWAYS grateful for!! I'm not sure I've had to buy the kids new clothes the whole time we've lived here! LOL) and we suddenly find ourselves with about 73 garbage bags filled with the outgrown clothing accumulation pictured above.

My problem is that I see such value in these things. I can't bear to just dump them all at Goodwill and call it a day. I can practically plan the vacations we could take if we sold everything for a quarter a piece. So I have a hard time just parting with it. I do the laundry, cull the outgrown items, put them in a bag and toss the bag in the storage closet under the stairs to sell at a yard sale that we'll have.... someday. But we've been here 3 years now and haven't hosted a yard sale yet. The result? The entire under-the-stairs closet was filled with bags of clothing!!

Well we finally have major motivation to unload these bags (and bags and bags) of clothing! Time to purge once and for all. We're getting ready to move!!! The house we've found is just a few blocks from our current home, which keeps us in our school boundaries and church congregation boundaries which is a big, big plus for us. And it has 4 bedrooms instead of 3 which the Giant Child is super excited about. ("My own room!!! Finally my own room!!") but the second oldest is moaning about ("When will I ever get my own room!? Why do I still have to share!?"). The house has central air, which our current home does not (ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh!). And the clincher? Several hundred dollars cheaper per month in rent! Seems like a no-brainer, so we're jumping on it. There are a few trade-offs. There is virtually no yard at the new house (which Willy likes - no yard = no yard work) but concerns me a bit (where do I send the kids when I need them outside and out of my face?). And the house has less general living space than the home we're in now, so we're trying to figure out how to fit what we have and want to keep as far as office/t.v. room/dining room/piano goes. Also it's a home in foreclosure so we're only guaranteed to be able to stay in it through the duration of our lease (one year) but houses are sitting empty here for years and years in foreclosure right now, so it may end up longer (and we may be able to purchase the house when the bank is ready to actually move on it, if we've decided we're really happy there.) But the pros far outweigh the cons and if all goes as planned we'll start moving our stuff mid-August. We've lived in our current home longer (three years on August 1st) than any other home we've been in during our married life. For all the moving we did in the first 10 years of our married life, it feels kind of strange to be preparing to move again now after being planted for what feels like such a long time.

So anyway, the next few weekends are all about the yard sale! Time to purge, purge, purge! I will conquer that pile of clothing once and for all!!!