Wednesday, September 23, 2009

I will never do another yard sale for as long as I live!!




So we had the infamous yard sale this weekend. I think I spent a better part of a month prepping for this yard sale. I feel like I was giving away our worldly possessions. Part of me liked the idea that this stuff was no longer in my house taking up space but the other part of me nearly cried when I sold Liam's cozy coupe for $5 and his golf clubs (that he loves) for $3 amongst many other things. Aidan did well up until the very end when I gave his scooby doo chair to Lindsey (and no Michele, we do NOT need it back). He had a little bit of a breakdown and I think finally understood some of the impact of this move. So I gave in and told him that we could use some of the money that we made to buy him a little something like a game for his DS. He wanted a Funkey (these little computer guys that you plug in and they create a virtual world - I told him no until he can read but after he literally sobbed in my lap I gave in on this one).

Anyways, so why won't I do another yard sale again? Aside from it being a major pain in my ass for very little money? Well, for one, I actually got yelled at for my pricing (note to anyone who has not done a yard sale - do not bother with pricing anything, every single person will ask you how much an item is in the hopes that it is not the price you actually posted) and that I would never sell a thing because of it. Ha ha lady... I sold a good chunk of stuff so screw you. Sorry had to put that in there. Secondly, I felt absolutely abused by how little people wanted to pay for my very good stuff - almost everything was in perfect condition, some things weren't even opened!! I'd rather give my things away for free to those who will appreciate it. And finally, the yard sale is going to cost me more than I made. I made $250 to sit outside from 6AM - 4PM (my time is definitely worth more than that) and in the process I managed to damage Josh's garage door, get rid of our wall unit that I HATED (but didn't manage to sell so I had to leave it on the sidewalk for free), but in the process of moving the tv out of the wall unit, the tv broke (Mike Patkin, if you are reading this, it was the tv you sold to us oh 10 years or more ago...). So I had to not only go out and buy a new tv stand, but I almost had to go buy a new tv (thanks for the tv Sue, you are a lifesaver) AND I still need to repair Josh's garage door.

So in hindsight...no yard sales!! Not worth the aggravation. I think I'm going to wait on more of the purging til we get back from Barcelona in Nov and I have a real feel for what it is that we are bringing or not bringing with us. Not to mention, I'm just sick of purging stuff at this point and need a break. It's not like I can't pull together this move in 6 weeks once I know where we are living. It's more about the details like dog vaccinations, opening bank accounts, selling my car, etc etc that I'm worried about getting done!!!

Ok, I'm off to work on more Rosetta Stone - I've become obsessed with it. Not sure if that's good or bad. And I'm posting my first pic - it's of the yard sale. Wasn't planning to post til we were actually moving but at least it will give you an idea of the scope of how much crap I was trying to get rid of!

Julie

Friday, September 11, 2009

Packing, purging, packing, purging and more!

So I changed my mind on the yard sale - just too much stuff to get rid of and that is the most economical way. I was planning to do one in Oct but didn't think my garage could take it that long. Fortunately Matty Flynn said he's doing one next week so I'm going to jump on the bandwagon and sell what I've got ready to sell. So everyday I purge just a little bit. I've also become obsessed with Space Bags. These are the coolest bags EVER!! I can fit so much clothes and bedding in them it's ridiculous!!! So far the only place I can actually see an impact in my purging is my office. I can kind of see an impact in my closet and based on the garage, I must be doing something!!!

Josh and I are diligently working on our Rosetta Stone as well. I'm a little nervous about it because so far I'm at high school level stuff which I've done before and am essentially just refreshing upon. But people swear by this software so I'm going to go with the assumption that once I get past the first group of lessons I'll see more improvement beyond what I already knew. I definitely swear at the software a lot - I'm not so good at trilling my "r"'s and the voice recognition doesn't particularly like that and tells me I'm wrong all the time. I don't like to be wrong! So it's kind of nice because I compete with the software - I'm determined that it's not going to tell me I'm wrong!!

In the meantime we got our travel plans for our Discovery trip today. We leave Sun, Nov 1 (they originally planned to have us leave on Halloween...um, no way!!!!) and return home on the 5th. So it will be a whirlwind trip. I expect we will be talking more to the real estate people in the next few weeks so I'm sure there will be an update related to this soon. But just knowing the trip is booked makes this more and more real!! I can't believe in a matter of months we'll be living in a new country, meeting new people and experiencing so many different things.

Julie & Josh