Spring is in the Air!

I must admit that this time of year gets me in the mood for spring cleaning. I'm also starting to panic because it's almost time for Dub to come home. My panic is that I had all these grand ideas of things I was going to do while he was away. I've never been the kind of person to scrapbook. Although I love to journal and save every card I've ever received, I don't do anything with them. My routine is to pile stuff in a dresser drawer and when it gets full, I transfer it to a Rubbermaid bucket (I should buy stock in Rubbermaid). I now have at least 8 buckets sitting in our spare bedroom waiting to be organized. I said I was going to take care of this during Dub's first deployment (2003), but I didn't get around to it (Okie talk - roundtwoit). I have friends who are avid "scrapbookers". They "crop til they drop", but I just can't get into the whole idea of cutting out little pieces of paper to make pretty decorations and writing funny little captions - heck, I can't even remember who's in the picture, much less something funny about when it was taken. Okay, back to my point . . . I went to a few of these scrapbook parties and was horrified to learn that I could be arrested by the scrapbook police! My pictures should never be stored in the attic (oops, better get them down), they should never be stored in photo albums that don't contain acid-free paper (oops again - aren't those the expensive ones?), and I should have all of my pictures sorted by subject, date, category, color, etc., etc. After enduring public humiliation, I took the first step and pulled all of my tubs from the sweltering attic. I stacked them nicely in the garage and eventually moved them into the closet (where they have remained for the past 2 years). I pulled them all out again when Dub left in March and I'm happy to report that they're still there. I did make a little progress when I bought the cute little photo boxes and sorted through my photos (holidays, trips, family, friends, etc.) Oops, I failed to mention that I've kept every single piece of paper that MissDub doodled on. There is just something about throwing away a piece of paper that your baby has drawn on. I know I must let go and lighten my load, but where do I start? How do you decide what stays and what goes? I say we just buy a bigger house, and I get one room dedicated to my Rubbermaid boxes. When the time comes for MissDub to leave home, I will simply hand her a bucket containing all of her stuff and say "good luck - I hope you're better at this than I was". By the way, my mom never scrapbooked either, and I think I turned out okay. I guess I would prefer to "preserve" my memories in my heart, than in an acid-free scrapbooks with cute captions.