Start cleaning

Phyllis Diller shared this quote, "Cleaning your house while your kids are still growing up is like shoveling the walk before it stops snowing" and I have abided.

But, opps! The kids have grown so it's time to get started on that.

Seriously, if you look at my desk, you know I don't like throwing away a lot of things. I am definitely not like those hoarders that are featured on a reality show but know I could do a better job of discarding things.

As I was cleaning out a dresser at home over the weekend - one I had not used so didn't bother to look in for many years - I laughed at this bad habit of mine.

I found several zip lock bags containing my kids' lost teeth. Included were note papers with the date and even what tooth it was.

Call me crazy - because I also found an old key chain of mine that had the words, "Certified Crazy Person" on it - but I just could not bear to throw those teeth away. Maybe it was because I thought perhaps they would find them in the garbage - though the teeth so tiny, they most likely wouldn't have and what kind of a mom would I have been anyway if I allowed my young children to dig in the garbage - and if they had found them, it would have burst their bubbles that there was no tooth fairy.

Daughter Marissa was helping me in this cleaning and she couldn't believe it and told me to get rid of them and not put them back in the drawer. If she had not been there, I maybe would have put them back because I still felt guilty about it.

I even found a note Austin had written to the tooth fairy after he lost one of his teeth that fallen out.

"I am sorry I lost my tooth," it said. "It is somewhere on the kitchen floor. Please leave me money anyway!"

When I told Jordan about the teeth I had kept, he was pretty sad to hear that the tooth fairy had not taken the teeth and even more sad to hear there was not a tooth fairy!

In my cleaning, I also found cards I had put away from my husband when we were dating and several handmade cards my very young kids had made, spelling phonetically instead of correctly, that made me smile and even a little proud to realize that yes, school paid off because they all do now know how to spell!

And yes, in a couple of the drawers I found clothes that were tucked away because I perhaps believed that they would fit me forever - no matter how many years passed before I wore them again. Wrong. Goodwill will be getting a nice-sized donation from me.

Marissa found the experience of digging into that dresser to be fun.

I guess all these years, I have also thought of that cleaning quote, "Cleaning never killed anyone but why take the chance" and as I discovered it didn't kill me, I may do some more of it another day.

* Reach the columnist at lglawe@stormlakepilottribune.com