Saturday, May 30, 2015

Garage Sale!!

 Wonder where I've been? Okay, well even if you haven't noticed the almost 2 weeks blogging break, I'll tell you! I have been working my tushy (pardon my French) off these past few weeks getting ready for a garage sale!

I mostly finished my May Minimalist Challenge (made it almost through Day 28!!!) and was completely and utterly overwhelmed by the amount of stuff I collected to sell/trash/donate! It literally took over our basement until there was only a narrow path to the washing machine. I couldn't wait any longer so I called my mom and said, "Quick, let's plan a garage sale asap!!"

So we did. And I worked my tail off carting things over to my mom's (she has a better location for a garage sale) over a period of several days. Then we spend 2 days sorting, setting up tables, pricing, etc. And not only that but my kiddos talked me into their first ever Lemonade Stand and I stayed up late the night before the sale squeezing 20 lemons for fresh lemonade and baking chocolate chip cookies!! Ah, the things a mama will do...


Mr Z making a sale:)


  Some of the toy overload!! We did pretty well on the toy sales!



Wow, look at it all!!! We had a lot of furniture that we weeded through. The entertainment center in the middle was ours and it was taking up SO much room in our tiny living room.


Ah! How did this all fit in our house??!! My stepdad asked me, "Is it about the money for you or getting rid of things?" I didn't hesitate...."Getting rid of things!" (although more on that in a min....)


E taking a nap at my mom's on one of our getting ready days. My mom's cat Boo decided to take a nap with her:)



The kids all made really cute signs for their lemonade stand, telling prices and what they were offering (bottled water, freshly squeezed lemonade, chocolate chip cookies and brownies!) I so wish I had taken more pics and planned to but it was much busier than I realized so I didn't get around to it. Bummer! The kiddos made $35!! I told them they just had to pay me back for supplies and they could keep all the profit:) Gotta learn business!


We had so much stuff that we decided to try for day 2 on Memorial Day but just for the morning. It definitely didn't go that well because most people were busy. We only made $20 that day:) It was worth a try! We did really well on Saturday though so oh well!


 
Garage Sale helpers!
 

And...this is what a long day in the sun selling things will do to you!

 
No one said it would be easy!! I read that after you weed through your possessions and simplify, it would be a good idea to do a garage sale not only because who doesn't like a little extra cash! But also because it is so incredibly humbling to see all your stuff spread out on your driveway and it will make you never want to collect all of that again!
 
Let me just say....it is true! Ben and I both just could not believe the amount of stuff we had there at the sale. My mom and a few other family members put some stuff in but 90% of it was ours. Talk about humbling.
 
I felt so good about getting rid of it all and passing it on to new homes but I wasn't prepared for the amount of stuff we had leftover from the garage sale. It was like I had to "let go" all over again and it was actually tough for me! We made 4 trips to the local thrift store just with leftovers and I made a trip to Half Price Books with our leftover books (5 big boxes!!) I had to struggle a little bit and just felt like God was saying, "It is just stuff. Just things. Let go." So I kept telling myself. It is just things; I can't take any of it with me to heaven so I just need to let go!! We even had to donate some of the furniture since it didn't sell on Craigslist or in the sale. Let it Go. (anyone hearing Frozen in their head right about now??!)
 

So, my house fell apart during all of that work and once it was done (and I finished all my trips back and forth clearing out my mom's garage!), I moved on to redoing some of our furniture now that we got rid of the excess. First up is an old child's desk of my mom's. We painted it a pale blue a long long time ago and it was chipped, dirty and worn. Time for an update!

 
The inside drawer liner. Yuck!
 

I sanded it and painted it a light gray color and put new knobs on!!

 
 
Some new liner inside. (I wanted a soft gray or blue but they didn't have any. Oh well!
 
A little fresh makeover does wonders!!


And once we got rid of our giant entertainment center (which worked well when we had a huge living room once upon a time!!), we needed something new for our tv. We had this Ikea table we bought a couple years ago stored in the basement. We forgot all about it until we were moving stuff out for the sale!

I painted it the same light gray color!


New and fresh! You wouldn't believe how much better our living room looks. When it gets clean (ha!) I will take a picture;) It opened up our space so much!
 
I just love furniture re-dos!!! Just wait (oh just wait!!!) until you see my next one!!! Coming very very soon to a blog near you!!




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