8 years of marriage + 3 Kids + 4 Moves = A shocking accumulation of stuff.
How is it possible for two people in their thirties and three kids under six to have enough stuff to fill our own garage sale? Where does an entire box of stuffed animals, with a box left to play with at home, come from? What were we thinking when we purchased – and paid to move – all of those books? Why in the world did I ever purchase that?
All of this ran through my mind this weekend as I set up for our family garage sale. We set aside boxes of things after we moved and started piling more into boxes over the past 9 months. Included in the mix were clothes I’d owned for years, stacks of books, and toys galore. We didn’t necessarily want to sell everything in the pile, but it became a battle of space/sanity vs sentimentality/want.
When you save toys for younger kids and then the younger kids receive new toys to add to the bins, the toy room gets out of control. When you fluctuate sizes and shop sales for new styles, your closet gets out of control. When you spend time making memories, giving and receiving gifts, and trying out new things, your stuff gets out of control. The craziest part – I had a full garage sale and I haven’t even tackled the boxes of clothes I have for girls ages 0 to 7 years old and boys 0 to 4!
While pricing items, I thought some of them might be difficult to part with. As buyers and hagglers came up to check out our items, however, I started to feel relief at the thought of letting them go. When the tally on our notepad starting needing new column, I just wanted to sell more things. It was also fun to send little ones home with a free toy from our 10 cent bin throughout the day. I even had the opportunity to help a couple of new churches fill their nurseries by giving them a “bulk discount” on their purchases.
We still had quite the collection of things post garage sale and brought them first to a local consignment store, then to Goodwill. We’re packing up for the summer right now, but I hope I can remember my motivation to purge when we return in the fall. I plan to tackle those clothing boxes and let go of unused things that are just taking up space.
Will you garage sale, consign, or donate this summer? How do you manage all the stuff your family accumulates?
You’ve moved 4 times?! Crazy! I’ve moved exactly once in my life: from my parents’ house to mine. And I am never moving again.
We have a family of 4 and have accumulated an insane number of “stuff” over the past few years. Our goal over the next month is to get rid of anything that has not been used over the past year…not as simple as it seems 🙁
We have a family of four, including a new baby crammed into a tiny one bedroom stuff. We started getting rid of stuff, but somehow we keep getting more. I am the most cluttered minimalist ever.