Suddenly Routine

A couple of weeks ago, we had our very first garage sale. My husband and I have been together for about 7-8 years and between the two of us, we’ve accumulated an impressive amount of stuff, not too mention the stuff we both still had from before we met. So after deciding that our house badly needed a good decluttering, I looked for some helpful garage sale tips to help us unload our stuff to our neighbors.

All the advice I had seen said to give yourself at least a month to get organized. Hahahahahaha… yeah, we didn’t do that. My husband had an unexpected week of vacation that week, so we did the majority of all the work then. We were in pretty decent shape until Friday. That’s when we realized that Iron Man 2 was opening and since Anna was in daycare, we were both free to go and see it. Guess what we did? The movie was awesome, but we were very behind schedule on Saturday.

The weather was pretty crummy. Cold, really windy and teetering on the verge of rain. I thought no one would come. But we went ahead and got most everything set up by 8am. Except for the clothes. There were just too many to hang. We put up our big tent in front of the garage in case of rain and put the signs out. And then got some big ass coffees and some donuts and sat and waited. And the people came. In the cold crappy weather. And bought stuff. It was great. We got rid of a good amount of crap including the big heavy dresser that we’ve been moving around from house to house. It’s gone now!

We even had a table of free stuff that included the set of encyclopedias from the sixties that my husband hates, but I love having. I was willing to part with them for the sake of house harmony.

No one wanted them. And making jokes about having their own set to rid of. Har har… I got tired of that freaking joke after about the tenth time I heard it. But someone came by and took them all. And seemed very happy to have them so I felt good about letting them go.

All in all it was a successful sale. Since we’re sort of on the edge of becoming hoarders, we still have a lot of stuff to purge. There’s another sale planned for a still yet to be determined weekend in June. Whatever doesn’t sell then is going to be donated and then we can have our garage back. Hopefully we’ll have some better weather. I want to sell everything now. Purging feels good.

And the best customer we had was the big bearded dude that came by with a t-shirt that said, “This one time, at bear camp…” Which made me giggle because I’m not that mature and I know what a bear is.