Inventory and Standards

While I'm off work for a couple of weeks, I'm getting some stuff done. Don't worry, I'm also taking care of myself. I rest often, especially after doing my physical therapy exercises. Hopefully I can do them soon and they won't hurt or agitate my injury anymore. It's a long process, that's for sure.

One of the objectives I have tackled is cleaning out the kids' closets in preparation for school. This is how it went last year - with two boys going to school. We made sure they had plenty of pants of whatever colors that fit well and had no holes. We removed all shirts that had writing/inappropriate pictures or logos (did you know an old Bible School logo is inappropriate?) and hung them in the boys' closet. They could wear these on the weekends or when school was out. The clean and approved shirts were put in their drawers to make it easy for them to get to each day.

Things are a little different this year. Now we have all three children to prepare for school and the rules have changed. Blue jeans, jean shorts and khaki pants are allowed on the bottoms and on the tops - polo style shirts, without pattern or color limits as long as they don't have writing or inappropriate logos (I suppose they have to allow the little insignias because there are very few polo style shirts without them). We removed a majority of the shirts from the boys' closet and drawers, because even the shirts passable last year with no writing were no longer good because they weren't polo style. Of course they kept some of their favorites, but Goodwill is getting a nice little donation this week.

Greta's wardrobe was the worst. I had to dig through her size six clothes to find a single pair of blue jeans she could wear. Most of her jean shorts are too short for school. She had not one single polo style shirt in her drawers or closet. Alas, we shall be doing the inevitable back to school shopping, especially where Greta is concerned. Greta still has a closet full of dresses for church and fun shirts to wear (thank you to our friends who share their still good clothing), and now we'll get to add to it a little bit of khaki and polo.

What I found interesting is that last year, when it was just shirts with writing, we kept many shirts out for the boys that had some of their favorite slogans/designs on them. The boys both love flight stuff and air force things so all of those aerospace things stayed. There were also many others that stayed and stayed and stayed in the closet, never to be worn, but we kept them.

This year, with an even higher standard to attain for school clothing, it was a lot easier to get rid of those shirts that were never worn last year. Some of the aerospace stuff still remained, but the boys also realized there were things they just didn't need; because there just weren't enough "non school" days to wear them.

This afternoon, after piling up three bags of donation clothes (one of which was nearly full of Michael's blue jeans that he outgrew this summer - still in great shape with no holes in the knees or even wear marks - doesn't it make you sick), I found myself contemplating the difference. As the school uniform standards were raised, I realized there was less and less that met that standard. I began to think about God's standards. They're always there and never change, but in His mercy we aren't always hit with everything at once. As we grow in Christ, we realize how high God's standards are and each year we realize there are more things to weed out as we seek to meet those standards.

As we cling to some things we know don't meet those standards at all, saving them for "off days," I believe we come to the realization as we get closer to God that there are less and less of those "off days." Just some random thoughts from a mom getting her kids ready for school.