So Much

One of the pleasant things about pregnancy is nesting--I really, really love it! Especially when I actually have a significant block of time to devote to it, which rarely happens...but oh well, I still have fun with it as I do it in bits and pieces!

Our nursery has just been painted and only needs a few odds and ends finished up before we can move the furniture back into that room, and I can really get it ready for The New Baby. Today, however, I went ahead and worked in the closet in that room, going through things, discarding some, and organizing the rest. Here is a picture I took part of the way through that job...

It struck me as slightly ludicrous that nearly the entire hanging space of one of our closets is devoted to coats for the boys. Is that really necessary? What would people in Nigeria think of this? Of course, maybe they don't need coats there, so they might think it doubly ridiculous. :) But really, while people around the world are literally starving to death or experiencing the loss of their ramshackle homes and all their belongings to floods, we have this many coats? And that's OK?

On the one hand, these coats range in size from 6-9 months to 10-12 years, as well as being handed down from one son to the next. A number of them came from thrift stores or were given to us by other people. They definitely get used, and I can't really get rid of them yet because if I did, we'd just have to buy another coat when the next son grew into that size. Also in my defense, I did find at least half a dozen coats today that we can give away to our local thrift store so that they can be sold to someone around here who needs a coat and the money can be sent to the far reaches of the world, wherever needed for food, medicine, shelter, etc.

On the other hand, it's still a lot of coats.

As I live and work and nest here in this house, I feel like we could probably get rid of half of our stuff and be just fine. Of course, it wouldn't be wise to get rid of some of it, only to have to purchase replacements later. But the question in my mind is not how much is enough, but how much is too much? That is a difficult question for me to answer.