Garage Sale..."Check!"

Phew, it's finally over! After the garage sale my mom, sis, and I put on last summer, I didn't think I'd want to tackle another one this year. But, I had nagging desire to finalize the destination of all the junk that was still left in my house after our move. Last year's garage sale was kind of a spur of the moment event that proved to be very lucrative. This year, we (my mom and I) put a bit more planning into it and vowed to search every nook and cranny of our houses for anything sale-worthy. It was a bit more difficult, as most all of the stuff left over from last year's sale went to Goodwill. I actually started months ago, but quickly lost motivation. The idea that my house would finally be clean an organized after 7 years of marriage was the only thing that kept me going.

Getting rid of stuff is definitely a process. When Adam and I first married, our stuff was in a bunch of different places, as we didn't have room for all of it in our apartment. Our childhood treasures were boxed up along with 1/2 of our mountain of wedding gifts. When we moved from Corvallis to a new apartment in Hillsboro, I sorted much of our stuff into boxes labeled "to storage" and "not to storage." We had a baby on the way, and needed that 2nd bedroom for a nursery, not a dumping grounds for all our extra junk.

We had only been living in that apartment for 3-4 months when we purchased our house. It was then that the junk really started to collect. I frequented 2nd hand stores and my mom-in-law (yes, she has enough stuff to open up her own 2nd hand store). Many of the "to storage" boxes stayed in the garage, but our parents were sick of all the junk left at their houses, so that came too. Add a baby or two to all of that junk, and you've got a LOT of junk!!

We hadn't really planned on moving so soon from that house, so when we did, of course I (for the 3rd time) began packing the house. In the year prior, I had done a great deal of purging and sent tons and tons of stuff to Goodwill on a regular basis. Although, getting Adam to get rid of anything was like asking him to dive into a pool of hot tar. I won't dwell on the subject too much for fear of the lashing I might get later...so on with the blogging...

After my umpteenth trip to Goodwill I was kicking myself as I could have thrown a killer garage sale with all that stuff! So, when we finally moved into our "forever house" I began starting a pile of things that I certainly didn't need anymore. It felt good to know that I didn't have to save things anymore for fear that one day I may need it for a different home. As far as we know, we're staying put! Anyway, we moved in April and had the garage sale in July. I was so sick of moving that many of the "to storage" boxes were still unopened and even some of the boxes I packed when we moved from Cornelius to my parents'. We were living quite well without opening them...so what was the use in keeping the stuff in them? Right?

Long story short, I went through every single box. I got another decent pile of garage sale stuff (plus all the leftover baby clothes from last year...still 6 FULL totes left over from the 10 I had last year!!) Mom and I had a very successful 2-day sale on Friday and Saturday. Mom was even able to sell ALL of the tons and tons of wedding decorations from my wedding to a gal who was having her wedding this summer with the same colors and flowers! What are the odds?? And even though we had much less stuff this year than last, we made only about $100 less! I only brought a few things back home...the rest went to Goodwill. It feels soooo good to be done!

I made Adam go through his stuff and seriously think about the things he wanted to keep. One of the bins he went through was full of stuffed animals he had as a kid. It's kind of a coincidence that he went through it when he did, because he had just shown the kids a few old episodes of "Alf" on DVD the day before. Alf was one of the animals (aliens) in the bin. Synnove took a liking to him and rode him around on her trike one morning.

My sister stopped by a couple of times during our sale and I noticed we were all wearing Tevas...so I snapped a shot. Elise (left) me (middle) Mom (right). I know...we're dweebs. It was the only pic I had of the garage sale.