Yard Sale: The Art of Getting Rid of “Stuff”

I’m a perpetual purger.  Feng Shui devotee. Clutter gives me anxiety. If there were a reality show the opposite of Hoarders, I’d be its poster child.  Twice a year, for as long as I can remember, I have gone through my house and purged it of anything I deemed unnecessary or simply didn’t use.  Having two kids has added A LOT to the piles of stuff that I’ve swiftly removed from the house and, well lately, placed in the garage.

Up until three years ago, when I moved into my current house, I would have a yard sale once a year.  The garage would be emptied and I’d make a few bucks.  Becoming a single mom found me busier and more over scheduled than I was when all I had to worry about was being a stay-at-home-mom ….so while the house purging continued, my garage soon became a panic inducing, no-man’s land that I rarely would go into.  Some problems are best ignored, right?  

Ok, maybe not.

I’ve been meaning to get rid of all the junk in my current garage for the past three years, but it’s become so easy to put it off that a mountain of things just grew in there. I swear it proliferated itself.  Kids’ clothes, toys, books, my old clothes, random junk, knick knacks, sports paraphernalia…..

So. Much. Stuff.  

It’s not until my landlord called two weeks ago and let me know that he finally wanted to start drywalling the garage and making it less of a spider and wasp paradise, that I was inspired to, once again, perform the ever enjoyable task of having a yard sale.

Today was the day.  I’m typing this at 6pm with my pajamas on and my legs up on the coffee table. Exhausted.  Yeah, I get it…..this isn’t actual hard labor….but for the first time in my yard sale-ing career, I ended up doing it alone for the second half.  Thank God, my aunt kept me company for the morning shift….chatting and laughing with her made the time fly.

The afternoon shift draggggggged, and I found myself less tolerant for the absolute lowballing so many people kept trying to perform.  Two bucks for an unopened board game too much?  Ten dollars for a kid’s bike that was only ridden a handful of times too expensive?  Brand new soccer cleats, perfectly pink and flowered and never used for $3…..outrageous!  So I found myself practically giving stuff away just to avoid lugging it to Goodwill.  I figure, what the hell, I didn’t know I had half of that stuff anyways.

By the time 3pm rolled around I was sunburnt and drenched in sweat.  I packed up the lawn and took two trips to Goodwill where I dumped around $4,000 worth of stuff… maybe more.  It hurts.  And what a reminder that less is more.  So much stuff we buy for our kids and ourselves that never gets used, loved, or appreciated.  So much stuff that sits in closets, garages, and storage units, long forgotten.

As a society we love stuff. We love to shop. We buy stuff out of guilt, out of impulsivity, out of a desire to fill holes better filled with experiences and memories.  When I looked at just this one garage purge…not even thinking of all I have sold and gotten rid of in previous years….it made me feel a bit of sadness.  All of it had been bought with the right intentions….either to make my kids smile, my husband (at the time) happy, or to give myself a little retail therapy.  

None of it really served its purpose.

Now don’t get me wrong, my kids have always loved their gifts…at least for the first few days….but what they have loved the most of anything I have ever given them…are the photo albums I’ve put together of them from birth until about 5 years ago.  They pour over them and smile and laugh and remember the “moments” depicted in them.  I owe them 5 more years of photo albums now….and that is what I will be spending any spare money I make on going forward.  

Those are the gifts they really want…..and in this picture obsessed culture….how can I blame them?  But they are getting their photos on paper. Like we did. Like our parents and grandparents did. Not this transient online only gallery….as transient as the gifts we end up taking to the local donation center.

I wish I could do it all over again.  Now that I truly understand how simplicity is beautiful, and less is always more.  Memories and experiences shape us.  We remember them.  We talk about them wistfully. We turn them into stories for our children and future grandchildren. I wish someone had slipped a note reminding me of this in one of the new mom care packages I got when my kids were born. Would’ve save me a lot of time…and sanity.

That new LEGO set and the three-story Barbie house with elevator just end up gathering dust and cobwebs.  I’m not saying we should raise our kids with sticks and paper planes….but maybe they don’t need entire playrooms full of stuff they really don’t need or care about.  We don’t need half the stuff we have in our own closets either.

I’m going to binge on some Netflix and try and forget about how much money I just watched myself drop into those huge blue bins at Goodwill. I won’t think about all the bills I could’ve paid with that, or how much food I could’ve bought.  I’m going to be grateful that I made $200 at today’s yard sale which I’ll use to pay for my daughter’s ballet class…..because memories….they are priceless.  Over and out.