The 5 Stages of Cleaning Out Your Garage

Image from Pixabay

After a hailstorm pockmarked my car, I vowed to clean out our garage so I could actually park in the garage. However, it took me about a month to work up the courage to enter the maze of boxes, discarded furniture and baby clothes. Here are the five stages of cleaning out the garage.

1. Denial - Open the garage door. Look at all the junk in the garage. Sigh loudly. Close the door. "I'll do it it later!"

2. Anger - Who put all this stuff in here? Not me, it must have been my husband. Or maybe my toddler carted all his old toys in there by himself when I wasn't looking.

3. Bargaining - If I sell all the old baby stuff in here, I can buy a double stroller. Hmm. If I take everything to the consignment store and only get $20, then I still come out ahead.

4. Depression - We have too much stuff in the garage. We are a materialistic society which has lost sight of its collective soul. There's no point in going on.

5. Acceptance - I accept that it will take me 20 trips to Goodwill to get rid of all this junk.

Nina Snyder is the author of ABCS OF BALLS and the designer of the HOT PINK ORCHARD JOURNAL. Follow her on Twitter @nsnyder_writer.

The Problem with Co-Sleeping

Image from Pixabay

Co-sleeping sounded like a great idea to me after nursing my son and waking up several times a night. At first, co-sleeping allowed me to get more sleep because I didn't have to get out of bed to nurse.

On some primal level, I also took comfort in the fact that my child was with me all night. If we were still cavemen, I'm sure we would all sleep in the same cave and not put our children in separate little caverns.

However, the problem with co-sleeping is that parents do not get any sleep. After more than three years of co-sleeping, I was simply exhausted and depleted. Sleep deprivation causes a range of side effects, and most parents are all too aware sleep deprivation is a form of torture.

We have since moved our children to their own beds. Hearing my daughter cry for 10 minutes before she falls asleep in her crib is torture in its own way -- but it's a small price to pay for eight hours of sleep.

Of course, this is only my experience. Other parents may love co-sleeping and have only a positive experience.

Nina Snyder is the author of ABCS OF BALLS and the designer of the HOT PINK ORCHARD JOURNAL. Follow her on Twitter @nsnyder_writer.