Of the little and great life lessons my husband and I try to instill in our children, one of them is to not hoard – to keep rooms and play areas somewhat tidy with the forethought to dispose of things once rendered useless or beyond repair.

It’s a lesson that’s just as valid for adults – adults who’ve had a multitude more years to accumulate ‘stuff’. Adults are maybe – just maybe – more guilty than kiddos when it comes to getting rid of things they no longer need.

We’re just so darn sentimental. tal.

Last week kick-started with a mixed-emotions sort of day. My husband and I brought our oldest to kindergarten for the first time, which made us a wee bit choked up and our youngest son blissfully happy. He couldn’t wait to rule the playroom roost once we arrived home, after all. King of Toys was his coveted position.

After that drizzly gray morning drop-off, I returned home and immersed myself in the tangled jungle of our bedroom and linen closets to distract myself from the morning’s hefty milestone.

Within these closets, I discovered just about everything but Narnia’s Snow Queen.

But the cleaning expedition was snow joke – and perhaps not the greatest timing for such an undertaking, given I’d just sent my baby to school and was now sorting through his long-outgrown baby blankets and items that had been cast in closet corners.

But here’s the difference between kids’ and parents’ closets.

Many of our boys’ items could be saved, packed away and tucked among other labeled boxes in basement storage – because you never know, right?

But my closet? It apparently contained items I knew would never be used again.

I am a self-professed non-hoarder. The very idea of clutter freaks me right out, and so I toss out, recycle, or Goodwill as much as I can.

But once I began peering behind summer dresses and stretched maternity pants to see what dustily lurked, I was horrified at my very hypocrisy. I paused, breathed deeply, and went for it without missing a beat. My 2-year-old gleefully clapped and rolled around my closet entrance in piles of ill-fitting pants and very old sweaters as it rained shrunken tank tops and too-large swimsuits.

If the shoe fits, wear it, but not if it’s totally beyond repair. Oh, my sole.

But the most difficult decluttering task came as I rifled through T-shirts.

“T-shirts are the hardest to get rid of,” my husband had warned. “They hold so many memories”, he’d said.

I’d laughed, but his comments were absolutely on point.

I planned to add half of my T-shirt collection to the donation pile on which my pint-sized tot was rolling around.

A practical thought, because I didn’t wear half of my T-shirts.

But as I unfolded each one, I re-discovered memory after memory, one after another faded imprint signifying a special circumstance.

There were several event tees from youth ministry days. There were shirts emblazoned with logos I’d designed for clients through the years. Soccer team shirts, a very loved, semi-torn university commencement shirt I’d received my first day of college were part of the mix.

There were shirts my husband and I’d picked up during honeymoon travel spots, and old, thin, discolored – dare I say vintage? – souvenir tees my dad picked up for us kids years ago from cross-country work assignments. When he’d bought the shirts, they were adult-sized, so my sisters and I wore them as nightgowns. Now, they’d fit as they were manufactured to.

Oh, I couldn’t toss these.

These scrappy tees were the tattered, cotton pages of a childhood scrapbook, a book stitched as years passed and newer T-shirts piled on top.

No, I couldn’t bear to give away these shirts.

But maybe their time as tees was done. My sister offered to sew them into a quilt, a new incarnation that could be on display and appreciated, like a beloved photo in a frame rather than tucked in a book.

And this would allow more closet space once again, so that my wardrobe could indeed be dressed for success. Perhaps the valuable metaphor of last week was accepting change, and letting go.

Perhaps my fear of letting go wasn’t 100 percent about 100 percent cotton.

My aunt sent her oldest daughter to college around the time my husband and I sent our son to kindergarten, and as she told us, there is beauty to be found in transitions, however difficult they may be.

We’re starting a fresh chapter, in our kiddo’s school and in our closets. And we can’t wait to see what the next page brings.

But I can’t really dwell on this now, because I have to go locate my 2-year-old in a towering pile of T-shirts.

— Michelle Cote is the creative director of the Journal Tribune and a nationally-syndicated columnist. She enjoys cooking, baking, and living room dance-offs with her husband, two boys and a dog. She can be contacted at mcote@journaltribune.com.

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