Cleaning up Our Lives

Getting ready to do a yard sale is always so time consuming. Just ask some of my homeschool mommy friends; we had a huge 5 family yard sale back in May. Wow, the time we spent getting that ready was like having a full time job. But I enjoy doing the sorting, pricing, organizing the garage like a little store and see my old things go to new homes. I like to meet the people at o'dark thirty and take a long nap after I've counted my money.

This yard sale was different in the evaluating process. Do you know how many purses I had stashed away in my closet? All neatly lined up, cleaned out, ready to do the switch if I wanted to match an outfit to the bag. 17! That's how many purses I had. That has got to be a sin. Who in their right mind needs that many purses? Who could even use that many? I could not justify keeping most of them. I got rid of 12. The ones that I kept are more like big Mary Poppins bags that I can use on trips or long outings, and a tiny dress purse that has sentimental value. And isn't that silly? A purse with some sentimental value. Then I went on to the shoes. I had shoes hanging on a rack since I've been married and I haven't worn them. I look at them everyday, never thinking twice about them taking up space in my closet, let alone my life. These shoes could be on someone else's feet going somewhere.

It was like that with most of the things I went through. Each time I tell Ryan we are going to have a yard sale, he asks, "Do we even have stuff to get rid of?" I chuckle. He doesn't go into my closet too often. I was kind of ashamed to even have all these possessions. All the "stuff" taking up space. It's not being used. I don't even look at most of it; it just sits in the bottom of a drawer or in a box hopefully waiting to get picked up and appreciated some day. Well, I had the yard sale, and I'm going to have it again next weekend too. I'd like to do it every weekend until all this junk is out of my house. I feel like I can breathe a little better now. And yet, I walk into another room of the house and realize there are three more boxes of "stuff" I could be getting rid of.

We were going to get rid of the skateboard because Nathan gets too discouraged to keep trying to ride it. As you can see we found a much better way to use it. Norah had a blast with Nathan all day greeting people on it. Funny how children never play with a toy until you're about to sell it for really cheap.

In between shoppers. Ryan never did take my triple dog dare.

Norah played with this Buzz Lightyear for the longest time. "I'm Buzz Lightyear! I protect the galaxy from the threat of invasion, I come in peace." We listened to this all day long until a wonderful lady bought it.

My bag of carrots I finished off. Making money makes me get the munchies.