Keeping Calm while Planning a Garage Sale

Prioritize and Organize

1 bag for Trash, ie: old Estee Lauder gift items such as lipstick in a weird shade.

1 area for “Gotta Keep,” ie: family pictures, 1994 VHS tape about the Razorbacks, a few folders of the kids’ stuff…memorabilia that survived a previous purge.

1 area for “Gotta Go,” ie: décor items and furniture that were in my den in Bartlett. We used these items to decorate and furnish the downstairs living area…the one we don’t use. It looks good, but it’s used only when the guys convene to watch 24/7 sports during the holidays.

What will be easy: Bringing the majority of items from downstairs into the Garage for the sale. No need to put all the treasures in a box. They go straight to the sales floor.

What will be difficult: Everything else.

Goal: Garage Sale at end of September.

Keep Calm and Host a Garage Sale

Keep Calm and Host a Garage Sale.

Extra sets of pots and pans, extra sets of dishes, pottery serving pieces. You never know when you might need eight boilers and five skillets, place settings for sixteen. A friend told me that I won’t live an extra day longer by holding tight to “stuff.”

Linen and cloth napkins, Christmas placemats with matching napkins, serving pieces, candy dishes, relish trays, Christmas dishes and coffee mugs and glassware. Plastic beach and pool-themed dinner and serving sets for summer cook-outs and parties are ready to have some fun. As I’ve looked at friends' family pictures on Facebook, I realize that multiple extended families who entertain dozens of relatives at all the holidays need this “stuff.”

It’s not easy turning loose when “stuff” has traveled with me and has served as a weird type of comfort. The reality has become overwhelming because everywhere I look is more “stuff” that I have not used, have not touched, have not even known was there, except in my subconscious. Diffused into other homes, displayed on different bookshelves, used for different purposes, this “stuff” will receive new life.

When the burden of carrying around his stuff, their stuff, my stuff, and our stuff lessens, a future will emerge with few encumbrances and certainly not so much “stuff.”