Saturday, March 27, 2010

One Man's Junk - The Garage Sale Saga

It’s that time of year, when the weather starts to warm up, the trees are finally filling in with green leaves and homeowners decide to clean out all of their stuff. It’s time for the annual Garage Sale.

Personally, I haven’t done a garage sale in well, never. Ok, maybe once a gazillion years ago when the items were baby clothes and pre-school toys. So this is a new thing for me. If you are wondering what prompted it, the reason is because we are moving. So actually, we will be selling the home in the garage sale. It won’t be on the 25¢ or even $5.00 table, however. You would actually still have to go through my realtor. But it’s still up for grabs.

In getting my house ready to show, my eyes were totally opened to how much STUFF we really have. It’s rather ridiculous and I’m almost embarrassed. Already, bags and bags of clothing have gone to the Goodwill, and some of the good stuff I took to a consignment store. But the rest of the stuff is going to be laid out in all its’ glory in a few weeks. The prices will be ridiculously low. So I hope my stuff doesn’t have feelings, because it won’t be sold for even a fraction of what it is worth.

Thank goodness for that saying “one mans junk is another mans treasure”. Because I’m looking at all this junk thinking “why in the world did I keep it?” If you are so inclined to come to my garage sale and support our moving box fund, you will find a lot of junk – I mean treasures – to choose from:

Old coffee mugs, dated champagne glasses from weddings we never attended, vases (they multiplied in my cupboards like bunnies), Christmas decorations, grandbaby stuff, blankets, throw pillows, plates, flower arrangements, candles, books – books – more books, toys, clothes, purses, board games, furniture, lawn stuff, cutsie knick-knacks, did I mention books?, tools, (Shhhh, my husband doesn’t know this part yet), boxes of electronic stuff (again, Shhhh), toy trains, stuffed animals, whew, need I say more?

This cleaning out stuff has been a real lesson; when you have a fairly large house, the object of the game is not to stuff every single corner full of stuff. Along with the useless stuff we are selling a wide array of what I still consider treasures - a dining room hutch, a pool table, (must move yourself), barware (from two bars), and an antique beer can collection that would make any redneck proud. But since we are downsizing, I decided to bite the bullet and just finally say goodbye to it all. So has my husband – he just doesn’t know it yet.

Ok, now I’ve gotta go find some more stuff to give away. My husband isn’t home right now, so I figure what he doesn’t know won’t hurt him. If he wants to buy it back, he can pay me at the garage sale.

Now, in the meantime, does anyone have a very small house I can buy that has hardly any storage room for me to collect all new stuff?

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