Yard Sale in T-minus 17 days

My family is moving to Scotland this fall (see another family update for more details). We are very excited! But I am now consumed with the incredible amount of work that needs to be done before we go.

At the end of the summer, everything we own will be moved from the East Coast to the West Coast and placed in paid storage. This means it will actually cost money for each item we keep ... that is big motivation to PURGE.

I am starting a new series of posts tonight to document the intense purge of our belongings as we approach the Community Yard Sale at the end of May - the "T minus" series, a countdown to the yard sale.


BOOK SHELVES
On Monday, I tackled two of our eight book shelves. This inspired my hubby to attack three more book shelves. We listed a bunch of books on Paper Back Swap and Amazon.com.

STORAGE UNIT
Tuesday my husband and I did a first round of sorting in our storage unit in the basement of our apartment complex. We pulled out everything that we know we are selling in the sale - infant car seats, strollers, baby swing, space heater, etc. There are still several boxes that we will need to sort through, but it was a good start.

MASTER BEDROOM
Our big tackle today was the master bedroom, specifically our closet. We started by clearing out clothes; then we moved on the more difficult job of sorting through all the boxes of stuff stacked in the closet. We finished about half the closet before the kids got up from their nap. I couldn't have worked much longer anyway. Intense purging is very inspiring, but also emotionally exhausting.

This was harder on me than I thought it would be, especially getting rid of all my maternity clothes. We don't know if we are going to have any more children, but either way, these are no longer worth keeping. I also cleared out all sorts of crafts, material, party supplies, gift bags, cards, etc. Even after paring down significantly before moving here, I was amazed at how much I still had but barely used in the last three years.

We are donating three large bags of clothing to a local charity. And we also cleared out four large boxes of stuff to sell at the garage sale.

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We are off to a great start. Did I mention how wonderful it is to have my DH around to help with all this? I know he has tons of reading to get done this summer in preparation for starting his dissertation this fall, but it has been so nice to have him around (even without all the work he does).

Check back tomorrow to see what we tackle next!