Gimme a hand (me down)!

We are in full-on hand-me-down mode here in "Madridia".

After Irene hit the area, we lost power for nearly 4 days, and I knew I'd have to do some serious cleaning around here before the kiddos could come back in--mainly in the bathrooms and kitchen. Everything in the fridge was thrown away, and because we use well water, we were not able to flush our toilets.

All that "Belated Spring Cleaning" motivation quickly spilled into the girls' bedrooms, and specifically, the closets. I took the opportunity to sift through A's outgrown clothes and package them up into different bins for V.

Take a look--each bin is for a different size, so that as she grows out of a size, I can simply dump the older (gently worn) clothes into the white basket, and take clothes out from the next bin. Finally--I have a system! And what's nicer is that V is set up for Fall--I know what she has already and what she needs (which is just about nothing). She has all sorts of warm, wooly footie pj's and a bin full of different shoes, long sleeved shorts, jackets, fleece pants and even a few sets of scarves and hats.

Then I looked through V's clothes, and all the items that were out of season or were too small got packaged up for the second hand store and Goodwill, along with her baby swing, Bumbo and a few other pieces of baby gear.

So yesterday A and I stopped in to the second hand store and dropped off a few bins for them to look through. The little one was so fascinated by all the tricycles, strollers and play yards they had outside for purchase. Inside, it was wall-to-wall clothes and toys. They had us sign in and leave out bins and then A and I ran a few more errands. After an hour, we returned and the store had selected a number of items to purchase and cut us a check on the spot. We took our bins, and the items they didn't purchase back with us, and will drop them at Goodwill another day.

Now, I'd love to be able to say that we made money on this whole Irene business, but sadly, no. Because of the electrical surges we've experienced throughout this whole ordeal, our range hood is now on the fritz--the exhaust fan won't shut off. But at least we won't have to pay to have it fixed completely out of pocket, right?