Garage Sale Wrap-Up

Ahhhhhh, done! (Well, nearly...)

The garage sale went spectacularly well! We made more $ than DH would've made by going to work last week, which is all I was really hoping for on that front, and I think we sold about half our stuff, including ALL of the large furniture pieces except for the hide-a-bed. We got lots of compliments on how well organized everything was, and on my directional signs (which, sadly, I did not take a picture of). I also wish I had taken more before-and-afters of our setup so I could impress upon you exactly how much crap we were trying to get rid of (and how much we GOT rid of, LOL!). And that's not even taking into consideration the bags and bags and bags and bags and bags of trash and the mountains of cardboard recycling that we cleared out in the two weeks before the sale. But our friend Ryan dropped by, and snapped some pics with his phone:

sea of shoes!

household table...and part of the mountain of clothes

ALL of this driveway stuff (except the poor couch) was gone by the end!

Garage Sale Tip: our sale was Thursday - Saturday, but we did about 75% of our total sales the first day, less than 10% the second day and the rest on day 3. IF I ever get it in my head to do this again, it will be two days only, Friday-Saturday. Friday to catch all the eager beavers, and Saturday for all the folks who work like normal people. Our middle day was dead, dead, dead. Also, 8-6 makes for a loooong day, but we did plenty of sales between 5 and 6, catching the after-work crowd. I really don't understand people who do their sales Wednesday-Friday, 8-4. They'll never get my business.

Sunday I spent about four hours (no joke) neatly packing the kids' clothing and toys into 12 -count 'em, TWELVE - boxes to take down to Once Upon A Child (OUAC). We dropped off 6 boxes - that's all they would take since it was an hour to closing - and they bought...wait for it...approximately 4 items for a total of $8.55. JACKPOT! LOL. Seriously, though, they are very very very very picky about clothing. Toys, it appears, have much more relaxed standards.

Monday and Tuesday was back to work, then Wednesday Levi and I were both off so we worked on packing all the unsold stuff for delivery to the local LoveINC Thrift Shop (it was *really* handy having a place just a few blocks away! If they hadn't been, we would've bagged everything and scheduled an ARC pickup). It took Levi THREE trips to get all the clothes, toys, and miscellaneous household stuff (coffee mugs, baby bottles, etc.) over there. Then, Levi took the kids' clothing that didn't make it into the first OUAC trip, as well as several boxes of leftover books - and three boxes of old LPs that didn't make it into the sale, oops - into town. The clothes he dropped at a different UOAC and the books and records he took to Half Price Books (HPB).

If you have a HPB in your neighborhood and haven't checked it out, DO. The cool thing about HPB is that they take EVERYTHING (books, anyway) that you bring in. Cheesy romance novels, old textbooks, car buying guides from 1999, a copy of "How To Father" from 1974 - you name it, they'll take it. (Their buy policy says that they donate unsold/unsellable books to "various charitable organizations around the world," but I've got to think that some stuff goes straight in the recycling bin or is sold for insulation or something.) They took all the books and 2/3 of the records and gave us $43! They DID give us back the records they weren't interested in buying - I don't know why that policy is different from their book policy....but it makes for a much more manageable ebay project than the original 200+ records that Levi's mom gave us to try and sell.

(Side note: I've already established a HPB Bag for all the books that I keep stumbling over and going "WHY did I keep this?" I'm also NEVER buying a book for retail price again. This place seems like a great compromise between paying $8-15 for a book, reading it once, being unimpressed and stuffing it on a shelf for all eternity, and my complete inability to ever get library books back on time.)

Anyway...After he finished at HPB, Levi swung back through OUAC and picked up those rejects - and $21. Woo hoo! All that's left to do is run the OUAC boxes over to LoveINC, and find a home for the poor couch, and the garage sale - and the garage clean up project - will be really, truly, FINALLY finished. In the meantime, though...check it out!!

YAY!!!!!

The 'I' in INFP

If you've ever done a Myers-Briggs Personality Profile, you'll recognize "INFP" as the acronym for Introverted-iNtuitive-Feeling-Perceiving - which is my personality type. I took a new Myers-Briggs when I first started my career counseling sessions, with the report being (duh) career-oriented. It was really interesting, but it's the "I" - Introverted - that's on my mind at the moment.

You see - the test results for each section of the profile came back as a "score" on a continuum of -30 to +30. On the extrovert/introvert scale, I scored...

+1.

For real. I was one point off of dead center, in favor of introversion. And thinking back to the test, I can even pinpoint the questions that I wavered on, that might have pushed me a point or two toward extroversion instead. I've always thought of myself this way - I like to call myself a "shy extrovert" or an "outgoing introvert" depending on my mood - but it was interesting to see it laid out in black and white. Cindy (my career coach) came up with the perfect analogy for this middle-of-the-road-ness...she said, "I bet you're the type of person who likes to go to coffee shops to read or study. You like being around people, but you don't really need to interact with them." So true!

The whole reason this topic is on my mind is a result of the garage sale - I've had more face-to-face social interaction in the past two days - with strangers, even! - than I generally have in a month. And I've really enjoyed it, but now that we've closed up shop for the day, I want nothing more than to pop in a movie, crawl into bed and not talk to anyone for the next 12 hours.

Adventures in Big Boy Bed Land

So far the transition to big-boy bed is going well! I was concerned that sneaking out of bed to play with toys would be an irresistable lure that first night, but much to my surprise, J took the "Stay In Bed" rule to heart. (He also fell asleep almost immediately, so that helped.)

Night 1: Bedtime at 8:00, peeked at him around 8:30 and he was sound asleep under the covers. Peeked again about 10:30, and he had wiggled himself on top of the covers and done a full 180 so that his feet were resting on the pillow! Levi put him back the "right" way. Checked again about 11:30 before going to bed myself, and he had wiggled up so his head was touching the wall, but at least he was pointed the right direction. I made sure to go in there right away in the morning so that he got the idea that we would get him up, and wasn't tempted to let himself out of bed.

Night 2: Bed at 8:00, up at 7:00. Stayed under the covers all night.

Night 3: Ditto. The bedtime transition appears to be a success!

Today, we attempted Nap Time in the big boy bed for the first time. He was good, although not sleeping, for the first hour. Then I heard creak-SLAM! "Mommy! It's awake outside!" J had started fiddling with the windowshade, and upon realizing it wasn't nighttime, determined naptime must be over. Since this was breaking the Stay In Bed rule, he had to spend the rest of naptime in his crib. OMG, talk about The End Of The World. J starts sobbing, "Moooooommeeeeee!!! Noooooooooo!!! Seeeeeep in my big boy bed!!!!!" The wailing seems to have stopped, but we're definitely not getting any actual napping accomplished.

Hopefully the quick visit to Baby Prison will still be fresh in his mind at bedtime. ;o)

Project Progress!

It's so nice to see projects that you started 6 months prior, finally starting to come to fruition! You may recall this, my second Random Apples post ever, where I talked about my linen closet and decide on a big-boy bedspread for Josh. And this, a few weeks later, where I briefly showed you the disaster that was my kitchen catch-all counter.

6 months later, my linen closet STILL looks awesome (although I did have to go look up that youtube video to refresh my sheet-folding skills the other day), and as for the other two projects, well, let's take a look, shall we?

Kitchen counter

Looked like this

receipts, mail, tupperware, small appliances, toys, junk, an award from 2008(??), my three-hole punch(!?!), etc., etc., etc., all jammed together so that stuff was routinely falling on the floor or worse, into the trash.

Yesterday, I did this
ahhhhhhh.....blank slate...

And now it looks like this!

Things are still not quite as compartmentalized as I would like, but I cut our plastic storage by about half and only kept the ones that I know we use most often. And I've trained Brianna, whose responsibility it is to empty the dishwasher, to nest things neatly instead of just haphazardly stacking stuff every which way so that it all inevitably tips over and crashes to the floor. That pile to the right is stuff that needs to go back to Levi's mom, and a stack of lids with no bottoms (which I should pretend to throw away and see if it brings their better halves out of hiding...), and a collection of pens-pencils-markers that still needs to be thinned out, but at least they're contained. To the left is the blender, the charging cord for my phone, and our change jar. And that's it! Most exciting of all, I cleaned out the eleventy-billion* paper grocery bags that were taking over the under-counter space to the point that the trash can was living in the middle of the room (ick)! I know a lot of them are going to get used for the garage sale (yay!) but I'm also awaiting delivery of a second recycling bin that is ONLY going to be for storing grocery bags...and they are all going to stay in the garage. Woo hoo for organizational baby steps!!

*really. I counted.


Josh's Big Boy Bed

...is in!

I couldn't find my post about how I eventually snagged the pirates bedspread, so if this is repetition I'm sorry, but I snagged it on clearance from Sears.com for...wait for it...ELEVEN DOLLARS. (Yep, I definitely remember typing that before. Weird.) Anyway, it's absolutely precious and I'm so glad I went for the full instead of the twin size. Josh is going to flip when he gets home this afternoon and sees it!

Back on my feet?

Had my final check up with the orthopedic surgeon this morning! The breaks are fully healed, now it's just a matter of waiting for the tendons and whatnot to recover from being wrecked. Doc says the best therapy I can do is just walking on it every day - which is harder than it sounds. It's really easy to drift into a limp that doesn't actually use the ankle. It actually feels pretty good - like I'm recovering from a really bad sprain at this point.

My ankle is still pretty deformed, which is making shoes a bit of a challenge. I have one pair of very soft and flexible Sketchers tennies, but the sole on those is so narrow that it doesn't give proper arch support and I find them REALLY hard to walk in. Plus, I occasionally wear an ace bandage or a brace if I know I'm going to be on my feet a lot, and NONE of my shoes will fit over that. Walmart, here I come.

I still don't know how long it will be until I can start riding again. I'm trying to tell myself I'm not even going to THINK about it until September. 8 weeks in a cast seems like it should require at least 8 weeks of rehab, right?

A brief observation on vanity

I got my cast off this past Monday! After a couple thorough tub soakings, I've exfoliated pretty much all of the built-up skin (ew) and am no longer ashamed to go out in public in legwear that exposes my shins. A handful of people have even asked to see my surgery scars, and that got me thinking...

How many women do you know - are you one of them? - who are walking around in shorts, tank tops, flip flops, with ankle, knee, elbow, shoulder surgery scars for all the world to see? Who are almost proud to show them off, and tell the story of how they got them?

And yet, how many of those same women, even ones who are in good shape, would never be caught dead in a bikini because it would expose their pregnancy stretch marks? Are you one of them?

Taking back my garage

A couple years ago, Levi and I rearranged much of our house, and a lot - a LOT - of stuff ended up in the garage. I always swore I would never be one of those people who have too much stuff in their garage to park the cars, but guess what...yup. For two years.

*Not my garage. Ours is twice as big, and probably definitely worse.

So anyway, in preparation for moving out of our house at some point in the nearish future, we decided to have a garage sale. And to have a garage sale, you need a garage. We've set the dates - July 23-24, mark your calendars! - and now we need to start busting our butts to sort through everything, decide what stays, what sells, and what gets thrown out immediately.

The original plan was to spend ALL day on Wednesdays sorting junk, as in theory we've arranged it so we both have Wednesdays off in July. Unfortunately, things rarely go according to plan - our very first Wednesday, I ended up having to work most of the morning, and when I got home, Levi was down with a migraine. We finally got started around 2:30, and put in a couple hours work before we had to pick up Josh from daycare. Here's what actually got accomplished:

• I thinned my book collection by about 1/3 (this was not technically a garage project, but it was something to work on while Levi wasn't feeling well, since I'm still on crutches for another couple weeks)
• Levi dragged in, and I sorted, three good-sized boxes of miscellaneous...stuff. I think one entire box was full of old McDonalds Happy Meal toys. I chucked them all in the Toy bin for the sale, and will probably either label them 10/$1 or free. :)
• Brianna made a good start on cleaning her room. I told her anything she donated to the sale, she could have (most of) the money for. She cleared out three shelves of her bookcase and came up with a stack of untouched activity books, several outgrown computer games, and a bag of too-small clothes.
• Oh! Also not garage related, but I cleared out an entire glassware cabinet in our kitchen. Out of that cabinet we kept 14 coffee mugs (2 sets of 6 and two individual mugs with sentimental value), three measuring cups, one small baking dish, and a dozen cool plastic drinking cups. We moved out at least a dozen random coffee mugs, half a dozen insulated travel mugs, and TWENTY SIX MORE of the cool plastic drinking cups. Cause, they're cool and all, but do we really need thirty eight of them? I don't think so. That cabinet is BARE now. I love it. ;o)
  

So that's it, so far. We've got three more full Wednesdays (plus the entire week before the sale) to work on this project and a LOT of garage left to tackle. Wish us luck!

*P.S. I'll try and take some before and afters for a future post. :)