Random Rummaging
1. Daughter will be coming home from college. Economic woes will probably mean she'll live here for a while. We'll sell of anything of hers that we can't store, and we don't have much room for storage.
2. We may be remodeling a bathroom and building a new and improved laundry room. This could lead to more "usable junk" hitting the rummage tables.
3. I've been cleaning the bookshelves and the basement with a quiet vengeance. If there's a rummage sale looming in our future, I'll save a few for sale rather than donate them to thrift stores.
4. We'll have an extra twin size mattress and box spring. It's a long story, including daughter moving home and in-laws downsizing to a condo and teen's bedding still in decent shape - don't ask.
5. In the cleaning process, I've emptied two file cabinets. They can go.
6. We've lived here for 14 years now: the longest we've ever been in one location. It's time to seriously stop stashing (it's not hoarding yet- I hope) and purge.
Meanwhile, I'm still cleaning the basement. It's not the most efficient method, but it's working. It has to do with laundry - a cliffhanger of a plot, not. Every time I'm starting a load of laundry, I take a minute or two while the washer is filling and the detergent is dissolving, and I empty a box from the storage shelves. The contents either go in the garbage, the thrift donation boxes, or the Save crates. So far, very little has needed saving. As each box moves off the shelf, I have storage space for: my spare crockpot, canning jars, shopping bags for the summer markets, and other newly and truly important things.
On the rummage list so far:
*a stack of Berenstain Bears books. My kiddos and my preschool students enjoyed them, but they're of limited use now that my own children are 17 and 23 and my students are in fourth grade. Rather than post them all of Paperbackswap, I'll set up a book box at the sale. If nothing else, it'll keep young kids busy while their parents browse.
*various luggage pieces. I have several messenger bags that I no longer use. I can keep one for judging music festivals, and the others will hit the rummage tables.
*twin mattress and boxspring (see above)
*lunch bags and coolers: I have several that are still good and look good, but I no longer use them.
So far the list is fairly small and all cheap items. If this is all we have by June, we'll donate to a thrift store rather than put the time and money into a sale. Chuck feels confident we'll have more of the Big Stuff by then, especially with the daughter's impending move. Okay, dear, I'm willing to wait.
Labels: family life, it's not easy being green, it's the economy, Random Thoughts
Stumble It!
2 Comments:
When we moved last year, we had been in our house for a decade. I thought that I had done a good job of not accumulating too much stuff and doing regular purges. What I found, however, is that we really squirreled away a lot of stuff in odd spots here and there. I started going through our things six months before our moved -- donating and recycling several dozen boxes and bags of stuff along the way -- and it continued up until the day we moved and on through the unpacking process. I was truly appalled by how much junk we had. Even now, I feel like we have too much stuff (I live with three pack rats), so I regularly go through closets and drawers to see what I can donate. I've never held a yard sale, as I don't have enough storage space to store everything until I'm ready to sell it.
What do you want for the file cabinets? Seriously.
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