The Day of the Big Yard Sale!

My dear hubby has been planning a mega-yard sale since last year. He has spent every spare moment in the basement sorting and cleaning and finding every item that we don't need or want. Not only did he put these in one place in the basement, he washed them all, sorted them all, wrapped and packed anything breakable, and then we priced them all. Anything that he felt was valuable he has cleaned, photographed, and put onto craigslist. So many of these things sold! He has made upwards of $1,000 dollars that way, not to mention selling the Mustang.

Last Friday, we hauled everything upstairs that we wanted to get rid of at the yard sale. Here are a few pictures of unwanted stuff.


We got rid of maybe 1/3 of the stuff. We had SOOOO much help with this project! Home teachers, Visiting teachers, friends and neighbors all made a huge contribution. It was supposed to rain in the afternoon, so Tony borrowed two canopies from our neighbor. However, Mother Nature decided to let'er rip around 10:30! So we were soaked. Our stuff was soaked. The shoppers were soaked, and mostly our sales were soaked! Only the truly diehard really come out for this one, folks! This also made for meeting some "interesting" people. We carried on until around 12:30 when we started drying stuff off and wrapping it back up.

We piled everything on the porch and then just collapsed for a few hours. We weren't sure we were even alive when we woke up, but we've slowly recovered. It was a lot of work, with probably the hardest part hauling some VERY heavy things up from the basement. We had already agreed that we were not going to TOUCH the stuff on Sunday, we were just going to relax and be together. It's not easy to ignore a HUGE mess on your front porch, but we somehow managed. Monday we spent some good time out there going through everything. Tony decided to keep some of the things that he thinks he can sell on craigslist. The stuff that we just didn't want anymore was boxed up. We ended up with 10 big plastic bins of household wares and clothing, etc. Elkins Park Library had contacted Tony via email regarding his yard sale announcement on craigslist. They are having a huge charity yard sale next month and offered to pick up whatever we didn't sell. The guy came to pick up the 10 bins that same day. Man was that a relief to be rid of that much stuff!

So we still have a lot of stuff left on the porch - larger things like furniture and tools. And just random things like a little stool, and a cast iron skillet. The Elkins Park Library guy never called back like he said he would, so Tony is going to contact a cancer charity who advertise for unwanted goods. Hopefully we can get rid of the rest of this stuff. Hello tax deductions!

Tony could not WAIT to get back down to the basement once all of this was over. He is relishing all the space we have now, though we still have a lot of cleaning up to go. He has big dreams of establishing a "man cave" in our basement for card games, hanging out, and making wooden things with tools. I'm all for it!

Going back to the day of the yard sale, I think I mentioned that we slept as the dead for a few hours after the sale. We then had the missionary Elders over for a pizza dinner and some scripture reading and discussion. It was Elder Spurrier's last Saturday in the mission field! I'm sure his next Saturday will be spent living it up in Utah Valley! He he.

Elders Steele and Spurrier - Powerful Missionaries with big hearts

We are so grateful to the missionaries. They have helped us IMMENSELY this Spring as we have made major renovations to our yard and also helped haul some VERY Heavy furniture up from the basement for us. I will document this in another post, but it was nice to be able to have them over for an hour and enjoy the special spirit that accompanies missionaries. We always try to give missionaries a small present when they are leaving our area, and Elder Spurrier could not have been happier with the dozen donuts just for him!