Yard Sale!!!
Now that construction of the Wicked Tiny House is 99% complete, we've started the next challenge - downsizing. We spent a good portion of last week going through every single item that we own and deciding if it is:
A. Something we need,
B. Something we want,
C. Something we don't need
Needless to say, it's been a bit of a painful process that has gone something like this...
Shenee - "These are not coming with us." (referring to all my canoe racing awards)
Charlie - "Yes they are!"
Shenee - "No, they are not. We are not bringing 43 canoe trophies with us."
Charlie - "Grrrrrrr, fine, but I'm keeping some of them"
Shenee - "Ok, fine, but only a few"
10 Minutes Later....
Charlie - "Ok, here are the ones I am keeping"
Shenee - "You only got rid of half of them! We are not bringing all of those."
Charlie - "But this one is from the race where I flipped the canoe 3 times and still came in first. And this one is from my first race ever! And this one is from...."
Shenee - "Let's pick a few of the nicer looking ones that we can use as decorations. The rest have got to go."
Charlie - "Grrrrrrrrrrrrrr,....."
I don't know how many times that conversation has repeated itself in different forms for different items, but it generally ends the same. We want to keep stuff, but in the end realize that most of the stuff we want to keep is just that - Stuff. And most of the stuff is adding very little value to our lives, and although getting rid of it can be painful in the moment, 10 minutes later we don't even remember getting rid of it. Which brings us to this weekend's fun task, the inevitable yard sale!
We posted ads on Craigslist and in the local paper advertising our moving sale on Saturday & Sunday from 8AM to 4PM. On Friday, I moved the tiny house out of the driveway and Shenee swept it clean so we would have somewhere to show off all our "Good Sh*t Cheap" as I like to call it. Saturday morning we got up at 7AM and started moving stuff outside. Within 5 minutes, the first people started to show up, almost an hour early. A few people were literally trying to look through the boxes as we carried them outside, and one person even came right inside the house!
By Sunday around noon, everything had been pretty well picked over, and we boxed up everything that was left that we thought was donation worthy and brought it to the Salvation Army. We cleared just over $500 from the yard sale and the space we are currently living in feels MUCH less cluttered now! Even though we did get rid of a ton of stuff, it still feels like we might have more than will fit in the tiny house. We are going to start moving in next week, so we'll see!
