It’s just stuff, right?!

Getting rid of your stuff is HARD. Christopher thinks it’s fun, he calls it a purge. I call it letting go of memories and never looking back. Isn’t it weird how tied we are to our stuff? As I go through each room, each closet and each drawer, I pull out items that I haven’t used in weeks, months, maybe even years. And yet I remember EXACTLY how I came to possess every item. The purse I guilted my mom into giving me and then never used. The scarf I HAD to have and then never wore. The camera my parents gave me when I was in high school and decided to dabble in photography, and haven’t used in over a decade.

Christopher and I have been planning to host a garage sale since we moved into our house, well over two years ago.  But we kept putting it off and I kept donating items, until this adventure came upon us. And suddenly, WE HAD WAY TOO MUCH STUFF! It seemed there was one answer – we needed to finally have a garage sale. So when we found out the renters wanted to move in a good two to three weeks before we had originally planned, we realized we needed to have it NOW.

It was so hard at first. Until I started filling all the boxes, and then I found I wanted to add more and more, sometimes adding things I wouldn’t normally have thought to sell. Like all the games we have (we do a lot of game nights), or half my wardrobe, or 75% of my purse and bag collection. A scarf and two baskets I had crocheted myself found their way into the sell piles. Suddenly it was easy to think someone else might love the items I loved.

But then came figuring out how much to charge for each item. If you’ve ever been to a garage sale, or even heard of a garage sale, you probably know that most of the appeal comes from bargaining over price. So usually when hosting one of these sweaty (thanks Florida summer!) markets, you price everything just a tad higher so there is room to haggle. Well Christopher decided that since the goal was to get rid of stuff and not make money, we weren’t going to do that. EVERYTHING MUST BE PRICED TO SELL. I told him that’s crazy, we would be losing money – and again, he reminded me that it wasn’t the point. Sighing, I lowered the items I was working on and we moved on.

Fast forward to the morning of the sale. First of all, let me tell you – if you want to gain new appreciation for those special friends in your life, tell them you are moving and have a garage sale. The outpouring of love and support we have received has been so overwhelming I can barely stand it. I hope I never stop having opportunities to thank those around us, because there is nothing like watching a friend come over at 7 AM, alongside your family, and deal with your craziness as you try to set everything up, all before her first cup of coffee.

Finally we started to get customers. The first customer of the day, and he wanted four of my really nice purses (a couple with tags on) and a couple other items.  He asked how much for the purses, and I told him $5 for all four because I hadn’t yet decided how much to ask for. I felt really weird afterwards. I should have asked for $10, maybe $20. But remember what Christopher said…. not about the money…. blah blah blah…. Another sigh. And then we had a lady come up who wanted to buy a LOT of stuff. Clothes, bags, shoes, knick knacks, etc. As she was walking through she had already been asking me to bring my price down on items. I agreed, because Christopher said… you get the point. And then we totaled it all up, and it was $46 – so I said, let’s make it $45. After bargaining quite a bit, we agreed on $35. Again, I felt a little strange. These were our items and I was practically giving them away! And then, as I watched her walk away with 4 or 5 bags of our unwanted and unnecessary items, a new feeling washed over me. I looked around at the other people walking around the sale with handfuls of stuff and realized, we were getting rid of so much stuff! Suddenly, I wanted everyone to take everything they looked at! I would give them any price if they would just take it off my hands. Because Christopher was right, it WASN’T about the money. It was about the fact that getting rid of these items means we can go on the adventure of a lifetime. It means we need less in storage, and we will have a little spending money too.

The garage sale continues today and I can’t wait to see what I will encounter, and the people and neighbors we will meet. Yet again, we are finding that even though things aren’t going the way we had originally planned, they are even better and even more amazing in so many ways. I can’t wait to see what else this adventure has in store for us, and we aren’t even on the road yet!

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