The Joys of Preparing to Sell Your Crap

I am so exhausted. We spent all day getting ready for next weekend’s big garage sale. We are getting rid of a ton of baby clothes and gear. It’s been about 3 years since our last garage sale, and I had forgotten how much work actually has to go into it.

We are (hopefully) saying goodbye to…

2 bouncy seats, 2 exersaucers, Bumbo seat, baby bath tub, 2 car seats with bases, 2 extra car seat bases, double infant carrier stroller, 2 Boppy pillows, pregnancy/baby books, small swing, large swing, nursery baskets, 4 sleep positioners, 1 baby sling, 1 Diaper Champ, Baby Einstein playmat, bottle sterilizer, and a TON of clothes. Serious, like every single item of clothing that the twins have had since birth. (Well, I did send one box of Carson’s newborn clothes to Chalna when Mr. Colin was born.)

It’s all bitter sweet. It’s well established that I am a huge sap, so that shouldn’t be surprising. I guess it was a giant exclamation point on the “you-are-done-popping-out-kids” issue.

We are also selling a lot of the things I inherited from dad after he died in 2005. It has taken me almost three years and two moves to finally get to the point where I am ready to let it all go. I must say that Mark has been great about not complaining about all of my dad’s boxes cluttering up our garage for all of this time. He lost his dad in 1995, so I think he understands that it takes a little bit of time before you are okay enough to have strangers picking and haggling through your dead loved ones’ belongings.

We also discovered that my dad had an obscene amount of office supplies — pens, legal pads, file folder labels, staplers, hole punches, you name it. So I’ve decided to donate it to our local school or maybe I will see if my cousin Jil (the teacher) would have use for it.

I am also going to donate all of the twins’ preemie clothes (which are mostly pajamas) to their old NICU. I remember them telling us that they are always wanting/needing preemie clothes for the babies.

The twins were, umm, less than helpful when I was sorting and pricing their old clothes. Kate is going through an unpacking phase, and Carson is going through a troublemaking phase. Not a good combo when I have large moving boxes full of clothes in the middle of the living room. (I had no other place to work. All of the tables in the house are full of books we are selling.)

So, if any of you lovely readers (and yes, I know just how many folks read and subscribe to this blog, and yet I have like two loyal commenters) live in the Austin, Texas area and are in need of baby stuff and other items (like a 32″ TV, DVD player, scanner, 2 computers, weed whacker, cookbooks, adult clothes, maternity clothes, CDs, DVDs, etc) and can somehow convince me that you aren’t a stalker or psycho (and I have a well documented history of attracting both), email me and I will give you the skinny on next Saturday’s big sale.