Decluttering my life

I haven't written for a few days because I have been very busy preparing for, then executing, a garage sale.

There are two parts to a garage sale, deciding what to sell, and pricing it. Deciding what to sell is pretty easy for us. With four kids, and no more expected, we can try to get rid of clothes, toys and other things our youngest has outgrown. We also have a lot of furniture that we have acquired over the years, so we put the stuff sitting in my basement out as well. And then we grabbed a handful of things that we no longer used out (ok, junk) to see if we had any takers.

Pricing things is harder. Some of our furniture came from my grandmother and is pretty old, if not outright "antique." Some of it is in better shape than others. Some of the things we wanted to get rid of pretty badly, and some we wouldn't be disappointed to keep.

We ran our sale for six hours each on Friday and Saturday, and I was surprised that we made about the same amount of money each day. I thought Friday would be slower because it was a work day, but it was just as busy as Saturday. We did not sell any of our larger furniture items (couch, dining room set), but we did dispose of a dresser and some smaller tables and chairs. We were also able to find a home for a lot of our baby items, including a crib, bassinet and pack 'n' play.

And, amazingly, just about every knick-knack and piece of junk we were hoping to get rid was sold. We got rid of things like an old shake machine, a stationary, recumbent bicycle, and a couple of plastic, indoor trees.

One of the things I was least looking forward to was haggling, but even that wasn't too bad. Sometimes, people would ask if I would take a specific lower price for something (which I would accept or not based on how badly I wanted to be rid of the item), but most people just payed whatever I asked, or left it.

My expectations for this experience were pretty low. I didn't think I'd move very much. I didn't think I'd make enough money to make it worth my time. I was leery of having so many strangers traipsing about my place, even on the outside. I have to say though, it was a lot better than I thought. I can't say that I was "hooked" and that now I'll become one of those garage sale junkies, like the people down the street from us who have garage sales almost every week. I will probably try another one though. Just not this week. I need a nap.