Sunday, October 25, 2009

First Garage Sale!

Jill's Journal: Last week we had our first official garage sale. Naturally, it was the coldest day of the season…we went from a delightfully sunny autumn to arctic conditions overnight, but it was a resounding success nonetheless. We bundled up against the cold and, with the wonderful help of Kristi and Adam, parted with hundreds of small items and a few bigger ones. It took hours to put everything out – I had been cleaning out closets and drawers and old boxes for a few weeks and the pile in the garage was daunting. And absolutely nothing was valuable! But we had great fun, made $487 from a bunch of junk we hadn’t used in ages anyway (and won’t miss), and it felt FANTASTIC to get some things out of the house.

One might think our house might be feeling a bit sparse, but that’s not the case at all. The drawers and cupboards and closets are all a bit lighter, but nothing big is gone yet. We're still planning to live here for approximately six more months, so I can’t do anything too drastic yet!

At the end of the garage sale, I threw most of the smaller stuff still left into big garbage bags and both Kristi and I made a trip to Goodwill. And some of the big stuff that really wasn't sellable afterward -- like old lights, an old dining room table that Rob used for poker at the office, a beat-up Christmas tree stand, etc. -- we put at the end of our driveway with a "Free" sign on it. It was all gone in no time! It amazes me what people are willing to take.

I also found a home this week for more than 1,000 issues of The Blood-Horse magazine that I had been saving for a future home library. That was hard for me to do -- I'd written in a few hundred of them, but I couldn't keep them. They took up 17 big, heavy boxes and had to go. That was bittersweet.

I still have a lot of work to do. This was just a dent, but a good dent. :-) We’re definitely moving in the right direction.

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