The Long Awaited Cleansing

Derek and Adam made some additional cash at their lemonade\bake sale

There were some tears shed letting go of the baby rocker



The kids worked hard to get things ready

Let me just start by saying that I do not like clutter. There's something about order that I find very comforting. However, with kids it's hard to keep the clutter at bay. Although I would prefer a nice orderly house with minimal possessions and each possession in it's place, I have compromised because the kids enjoy all the toys, games, etc and I know the clutter won't last forever.

Each year I would buy additional plastic storage drawers and bins to hold the ever increasing volume of kid stuff. Our living room has been filled with the plastic drawers so that the kids would have easy access. Helen was not happy about "all the plastic", but it was functional and it was cheap. Periodically we would mobilize, usually after a big Christmas haul, to reorganize the storage and get everything in it's proper place. But it was hard to purge things. We would think that the kids were done playing with something so that we could get rid of it or store it in the attic or crawlspace, but inevitably Helen would inform me that one of the kids was recently playing with the item. So I just sighed and bided my time.

This summer I decided that the time was now! Once swim team was over I talked Helen into making the garage sale happen. Actually it was more of a tantrum and some mutterings about how "the cleansing" was the main project I wanted Helen to tackle during her summer off.

Helen is not organized by nature. She likes organization and says that she likes that I keep things orderly, but she gets overwhelmed easily and ends up just working around the disorganization. So the garage sale was a monumental hurdle for her.

Once the kids found out that they could make some money they were all in. We all worked together over a week or so to get things ready, especially Helen and Derek. Adam still gets distracted playing with everything.

We had clothes and toys in the attic and crawlspace from when Derek was born 10 years ago. We also had plenty of household things that had accumulated over the years. We cleaned it all out and now the only plastic storage bins are all upstairs in the playroom and kid's rooms - no more bins in the living room. The playroom, the attic, and the crawlspace all look so nice and tidy now.

We listed a number of things on craigslist.org and then had the garage sale Friday and Saturday. The weather was beautiful and we sold a bunch of stuff. We walked away with about $450 and the kids made about $150 each. Anything left over we gave to the local cooperative ministry or gave away on the local freecycle group.

We've given a number of things away over the years, but we've never sold anything before. We never really cared about making any money, but once we decided to sell things this time we became conflicted. We would find ourselves mulling over a sale because of a minimal price difference and then we would shake ourselves out of it and remember the ultimate goal was to just get rid of the stuff. We couldn't believe some of the stuff people wanted and were miffed at some of the stuff people didn't want. It was an interesting experience.