It's theirs! So, why am I keeping it?

When is the “right time” to get rid of your adult children’s stuff?

For me, it was last weekend. And, it was just the tip of the iceberg.  

It started with the day I moved a desk out of my 30-year-old daughter’s over-crowded former bedroom. Which, by the way, we still call “Hilary’s Room.” A room she hasn’t occupied permanently since leaving for college in 2004.

It was as if I had taken the blinders off that day, and had really looked at the room. In the bookcase, among other things, her diploma, her photo albums, a “Happy Birthday” plate perched on a stand. My daughter has grown up. Moved out. Married.  She and her husband live in a home now with lots of space. Why am I hanging on to this stuff?

I headed to The Container Store and stocked up on clear plastic tubs with lids. I was on a mission.

I packed as much as I could into three large tubs and left them in the center of the room for her to claim when she and her husband, Doug, come to Sunday Night Dinner.

“But, Mom,” she said, when I told her to take them after dinner. “These things need to be here.”

“Why?”

“I don’t know,” she replied. “It’s my childhood home.”

That’s when I slipped back into mother-mode. “Ok, I understand.”

Wait! I thought the next morning.  Why am I keeping all this? These are her memories. Her things…

I took a poll among friends.

“Oh, we got rid of that stuff a long time ago,” one said.

“I couldn’t possibly let these things go,” said another.

My children are adults. Enough already. Why am I hanging on?

I go back and forth in my mind, justifying. Shouldn’t I save her dolly stroller and for her own daughter someday?

“No,” my friends told me. “It’s probably not even safe anymore. Trust me, they’ll get their own new shiny ones.”

“What about my son’s Lincoln logs and the Legos stacked in boxes in the garage?”

“Ok, save a few but get rid of the rest,” was the consensus.

Dare I admit that I still have my 33 year-old son’s Castle Greyskull along with four boxes of his baby toys. Or, that we rent two storage units for our 27-year-old’s stuff because he’s always on the road for work and his current place is too small?

Heck, my husband’s mother still has his baby teeth! Am I a bad mother for unloading all their childhood things on them?

What to do?

Transition. That’s what.

I headed out to the market a few days later and purchased a small basket of Hilary’s favorite childhood snacks. Put them in a pretty basket and dropped it and the plastic containers at her house along with a note: “…a little comfort to take you back while you sift through these boxes. Love, Momma”

I called my sister, April, on the way home. “Well, I did it and it’s just the beginning.”