Sunday, August 19, 2012

good riddance!

Yesterday we had a yard sale. We've been tossing things in the garage for months, and Marc and I spent a large part of last week sorting, deciding, and pricing.

But the best part of all is that the kids went through their rooms thoroughly, with an eye for getting rid of whatever  they don't use anymore! Max and Lucas pulled everything out of their closet, threw away multiple bags of trash, and even cleaned out under the bed! I walked in and found Lucas using the vacuum attachments to vacuum under the bed and declared it the best day of my life.

(They were highly motivated, as we let them keep the money they earned.)
Michelle came down from Salt Lake on Friday evening to help out. She made signs while I made dinner. She slept over and helped us during the whole interminable-feeling sale!
Sadly, it was too busy at the beginning to take any photos. We advertised 9am as a start time, but of course people were there as soon as we started pulling everything out at 8.

Pictures I wish I had taken: the collection of Monsters, Inc. and Toy Story toys that my kids got so much play out of, Max's collection of Star Wars figures, Lucas's bins of Bionicles. The kids were good salespeople! Eva even went around the neighborhood, inviting her friends to come...
Marc tried to sell the Predicta television that he bought his exhibit at BYU years ago. He had several people interested, but he was holding out for more than they wanted to pay. (He's going to go the eBay route.) We gave Jill our black kitchen chairs, and she traded us for the ones she's not using anymore. We've had Jessie's wedding dress in our garage for 7 or 8 years! I tried to sell it on craigslist several times, to no avail. Still no luck.
This was our cash box, with envelopes for each of the kids. Michelle ran to the store for us at one point to get small bills, as we had several buyers come with a $100 bill (and want to buy a small item)! What the?
We had so many books. This isn't even all of them. It shocked me, since when we had our last yard sale about 7 years ago, we sold tons of books. How did we have so many more to get rid of since then? Marc says it's because we're a bookish lot. Amen.

The funniest part of the sale was that our neighbors the Coxes ended up buying tons of our stuff. Between Heidi and her daughters, they bought Eva's play kitchen, the chairs, my glider rocker, car seats, and various decor items. (There were quite a few things that I was secretly hoping the Coxes would buy. I wanted things that I love to go to people I love!)
Michelle has never had a yard sale (but is planning to soon), and she was intrigued by the strange traffic patterns of the beast: basically tons of people would come, then there would be a lull with absolutely no one for a little while, then the hordes would arrive again. She told Max that she wanted him to do a study of this enigma so that she could understand it, and he said he would get his best people on it.

Garage sale pros: we earned $400, and the kids earned $230.  (They got their new wii, with money to spare.) We got rid of a TON of stuff. We organized our garage. The kids' rooms, at least, are clean and tidy.

Garage sale cons: it took a lot of man-hours to get ready for the sale, we had to take two van loads of stuff to D.I. afterwards, we still have a few heavy items in our driveway driving me crazy, and the garage is still disappointingly full and messy.

Yesterday, my nerves were shot and I was not sure that the pros outweighed the cons. Today, after a nap, I concede that they did, if only to rid us of so much stuff we didn't use anymore!

But I don't want to do that again anytime soon.

4 comments:

Neighbor Jane Payne said...

This feels good just READING about it. I love that good riddance feeling. It's highly addictive.

What will you do with your $400? Buy more things or have an experience? Oh wait. I know what happens to four hundred extra dollars. A new bill comes in the mail or someone breaks their leg or the dishwasher springs a leak. Never mind.

I would love coming to your yardsale.

Jill said...

Hooray for successfully purging so much stuff!! Events like this make me want to be better about purging as I go so that I can spare myself all this work, but at least you got some money out of it.

patsy said...

oh man!
this looks like so much work!
Good for you for getting it done & getting the $$

I'm impressed at the amount of work your kids put into it- nothing feels better than a clean house- not that I would know? I feel like I live in a mess!! GEtting back in control- the only reason I want school to start.

Charlotte said...

Ah getting rid of stuff feels so, so good.

And of all the lots to be, I'd sure rather be a bookish one. I went to Powell's yesterday and had to carefully select what to buy, because I really don't have much room for new reads.

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