yard sale!

our friend julie and mike were having a yard sale today so noah and i went over this morning with a van-load of stuff to sell.

i sold one thing and made a whopping $3. lol

we are going to try again after we get home from pennsylvania on jan 19.

they did give us a set of bunk beds though that we are going to use for the boys bunk rooms. so that was a big plus for the day.

they also gave us a satellite dish. i didn't know if we needed one or not. steven said probably not, but we'll have it if we do.

decreasing volume

we love movies. a lot. and we have a lot of them. but the boxes are huge in comparison to the dvd itself. so instead of getting rid of movies, i'm getting rid of their boxes.

i cut out a cardboard template so i could cut out a piece of the cover so nicholas (we, all, really) could find which one he wants to watch easier.


we have to get a second folder. this one filled up and there are still a few that need taken out of their case. i'm going to to a folder for A - M and one for N - Z.


the "grown-up" movies are going to be a project. yikes. i think we will probably end up getting rid of a bunch of them.

trains

nicholas and i went through and tossed half his train set. he had no problem getting rid of any of it. he did take back a crane though :P

he had so much that he never played with them because it was overwhelming. people (including us) didn't know what to get him that fit in the no plastic no battery criteria. so they got wooden train track pieces with plastic accessories. oi.

steven went to the bus yesterday instead of coming home for lunch. he got off the last ceiling panel. he needed to grind it off around the door.

the front box with the handle is the keep box. the box behind him is the toss box.

when we were sorting keep/toss, nicholas exclaimed "nooooo! my train set is doooooooomed!" haha it was so funny.

a few toys and a cricket

i always hated when my parents would get rid of my toys when i was little. i think it was somewhat traumatic for me. toys would be there one day and just gone the next.

the first time i tried getting rid of some of nicholas' toys he was a baby. under one year old. i had a panic attack because i didn't want to hurt him by getting rid of his things. it was rough. i think i ended up getting rid of 1 grocery bag's worth.

so this morning nicholas and i went through toys together. it was more painless than i thought it was going to be.

we had a little back and forth regarding the train station. he wanted to keep it (and so did i, really) but we just won't have room for it in the bus. :(

so we got rid of: half the blocks, 1 small wire toy, 1 plastic xylophone (we had 2), 1 big activity cube (we had 2), an abacus (we had 2), the train station, and 2 huge stuffed frogs.


when we went out to do the laundry today we found a big cricket stuck in our laundry bucket. poor guy!

nicholas wanted to keep him but when i reminded him that his family was probably looking for him, he let him go.

10 gadget getout!

i found this blog today called organizing dinner. the author and i happen to be from the same hometown. (lehigh valley!)

she blogged a challenge a couple months ago called the 10 gadget getout. challenging us to get rid of 10 kitchen gadgets. at first i thought "uh, yeah right. i use EVERYTHING!" but i tried anyway. turns out i could. :P

teapot
food mill
jello egg mould
garlic press
can opener
apple corer
dough mixer
2 cheese cake pans
sifter
george forman grill
noah's feet with shoes on the wrong feet... oh wait. :p

all bagged up and ready for the yard sale pile.

baby clothes purge

i thought getting rid of baby clothes was going to be a lot harder than it was. i've gone through them before but this time was a lot easier. i went into it with the thought of only keeping my favorites instead of keeping everything that was wearable.


the garbage bags is the get rid of pile. the 2 blue tubs and the juliette gordon lowe birthplace bag is the keep pile. the bag only has my breast pump and blood pressure cuff. they will go in another box later.
noah doesn't look too happy about getting rid of his old clothes. haha

the yard sale pile os really starting to gain some mass now. i like it.

trash can and more purging

the boys and i went thrift shopping this week. my big score was this trash can holder thingy for $10. 1 less plastic thing we will need in the bus!


i've had this stuff boxed up for one of steven's co-workers that had a baby a month ago for like 4 months. hopefully, he will actually give it to them now that the boxes are blocking him from opening the door.

here's our pile of stuff we are getting of so far. i think we are going to have a yard sale. i'm unsure. on one hand, we might get a little bus money. on the other, we have to keep this crap in the house until it's all collected.

beginning the purge

i was doing some living in the bus daydreaming while looking at some living-on-the-road blogs when i came across this post.

i've been trying to keep getting rid of stuff in the back of my mind on purpose because it's overwhelming. we have a lot of stuff. a. lot. of. stuff.

but reading that got me to face the fact that we aren't going to be able to bring a house's worth of stuff onto a school bus. most of which i don't even want anyway.

you know when you move and you get to the last couple hours of packing and there are little odds and ends everywhere? you are SO done with organizing so you just throw it in a box and forget about it. we have a lot of that. we've moved 5 times since i got pregnant with nicholas. with approx. 2 odds and ends buckets per move.... that's a lot of junk we don't want.

and with having small kids, people are constantly giving us stuff. we had to limit the grandparents to 1 gift per kid because one christmas there was so much that it literally didn't all fit in the car to come home. they have more clothes than will fit in their drawers.

so it's time.

time to shed the unwanted, unneeded, unnecessary STUFF.

our (my) goal is to get rid of 60% of our stuff.

we started last night by going through the blankets and sheets. we went through the linen closet, and 1 tub of baby blankets. we got rid of 1 bags of garbage, and 2 bags for donation. we kept 1 tub full, 1 small zipper bag of sheets and 2 blankets. (not counting the ones on the bed already.)

the clear bin wasn't gone through because they are heirloom quilts that steven's old tyme relatives made. the space heater is on the top shelf.

today, we started in the garage.

yikes. that's where the majority of our stuff it. it was so bad that you literally couldn't walk in there without standing on something.

it's a start.

we went through 7 tubs/boxes. most of them were half full. i scooped stuff up off the floor and threw it in them to fill them up.

this is what is left after throwing stuff in the trash, donating and putting stuff away that should have been put away when we moved in.


a sampling of stuff we got rid of: