Yard Sale

I had a yard sale last Saturday. I've been planning it since January. It was #1 on my New Year's resolutions list.  I can finally check that one off.

Seriously, it's amazing how much crap a house can hold, especially when it's hidden crap. One entire corner of my basement was piled with storage bins, cardboard boxes and bags of C_R_A_P set aside for a tag sale. For four months I organized and purged closets, cabinets, under beds, shelves and areas of the basement. It was a frustrating, tedious job. Every time I turned around I'd find more C_R_A_P. I'd throw my hands up and walk away, then come back after a much needed break to tackle it again.

It probably sounds like my house looked like this:

This is not my house. I think the image is from TLC's Hoarding show.

Thank goodness, my house isn't even close to that mess. In actuality,  my hall closet looked like this a little over a month ago.

Not too horrible but the contents of the top shelf came tumbling down every now and then.

OMG, look at the wall of sheets and towels on the bottom shelf. No wonder I couldn't find anything in that mess. The bag on the bottom right is baby bath toys. My kids are 15 and almost 12. Time for those to go, wouldn't you think? (they ended up being freecycled)

It took me two days to tackle that mess - first the linens, then the bins of stuff. Finally, on May 3rd, that fateful day when my husband broke his ankle and our world changed at least temporarily, I finished the closet (before I got the dreaded phone call!).

This is what it looks like now. It's been a month. It's not perfect but at least we can find stuff. The wall of towels is gone! I also have enough room on the floor to store our board games (not photographed), which were previously on top of the shoe rack in my bedroom closet!

The top shelf was completely purged and now holds our beach towels and a few other items.

My bins are organized all nicey nice.

No more wall of sheets and towels. I can find what I need.

I seem to have strayed from the original topic of this blog post, which was my tag sale.

My tag sale turned out amazing. It was held from 9 am to 3 pm. Thanks to an awesome classified ad that I was able to run for free (I work for a newspaper), the customers started pouring in around 8 am. We had a mini mob scene going on for about two hours. It was so cool! People came steadily until 2 pm, when it started to rain - just lightly - but enough for us to have to bring the stuff into the garage. Then it started to pour and the customers stopped coming. I made $171 so I can't complain. I paid each of my kids $10 for helping me out. I ended up with $150 to add to our vacation fund. Yes!

The clean up was as much of a chore as the four months spent getting ready. There was still a lot of crap that didn't sell (all those votive holders I complained about in a much earlier blog post - no one else wanted them either!). I held a freecycle tag sale the next day and a few people came. I still ended up hauling six or seven boxes of leftovers to Goodwill. Only a handful of things came back into the house.

Unfortunately, when my husband had his accident my tag sale project came to a screeching halt. I had so much more to get rid of but was only able to spend a small amount of time on it. I'll have to have another tag sale in the fall if I want to keep my resolution. It's not what I originally planned but as the saying goes, "if you want to make God laugh, tell him your plans." My summer will be spent organizing and gathering the rest of the stuff that didn't make it into the tag sale. I can devote one day a week to this project. I am determined to get the C_R_A_P out of my house.