Clean/dirty (how can she not like ice cream???)

Tomorrow, we’re having a yard sale. Right now I am busy rounding up things from around the house that don’t get as much use as I think they should. If I can make a buck from it, and won’t have to pack it and move it, and it’s not nailed down… then it’s fair game. You cannot even get in the dining room door right now, since that was designated as a holding tank for the paraphernalia of our lives a couple of weeks ago when I started stockpiling it. I find it difficult, this process of purging. I have things that came into our current house in boxes that were never unpacked, and yet I still have a hard time getting rid of them now, particularly since we have kids. Leftover yarn from a knitting project I took on 15 years ago? – the kids can maybe use it for a craft project someday. Nursery rhyme toile fabric in blue? – well, Mallory COULD have been a boy, I MIGHT have made something for her from it, and maybe someone else I know will have a boy and maybe I will sew something for them… (Note that my sewing machine, which I bunged up back in March, is still not fixed now at the end of June, though I need to get that remedied because fabric for Roman blinds for the new house is on its way...)

I have to face facts though; I am putting some things out for sale that I considered putting out in the first yard sale we had, about 5 years ago. I didn’t part with them then and they’ve been living in storage ever since – I think I am now ready to let them go.

We have lots of stuff that is perfectly good, but just doesn’t fit into the new place, and it kills me that at a yard sale you take something you bought for $300 and put a $5 price tag on it and hope someone doesn’t haggle you down to $2.50. (We all know that by some strange law of nature, the complete and utter crap sells much faster than the good stuff you are actually hesitant to part with. There are a handful of ugly cheapy-cheapy commercial florists’ grade vases that were left behind in a closet when we moved into this house, and I am putting my money on those as being the first things to sell.) There is also the small matter of getting rid of old stuff before replacing it with new, or before outgrowing the need for it. Our current living room has no light fixtures and we make do with floor lamps. This will be gloriously rectified in the new house, where we will have ceiling fixtures aplenty, but the question remains: do I sell my lamps now, while the crowds are swarming, and live in the dark all summer? Or do I wait til the week we move, and then try to deal with them when I am already so short on time that I am staying up til 2 a.m. each morning to get the packing done?

I’m sure the best way to declutter and make a small fortune would be to sell off the kids’ toy collection, but we are not going to go there with this sale. I don’t want to traumatize the kids by having them watch out the window as other kids trot away with their belovedness in exchange for a buck or two. Moving is a hard enough process as it is; I think we’ll wait til we’re comfortably settled in the new house, and then the Toy Fairy will come and fly off with a mysterious Goodwill donation in the middle of the night.

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In other news, it’s official – Liam and Mallory are trading rooms. Liam gets the back room with the long stretch of uninterrupted wall space, and Mallory gets the front bedroom. Liam has fully bought into this new state of affairs, and soon it will be too late to go back on the decision: the painters are starting on Tuesday.

And remember how I warned that we were on a bad luck streak and that you should stay away lest it spread? Well, you didn't listen, did you? My sister had a car accident this week, and my friend hit a deer. Consider yourselves triply warned!