Friday, April 3, 2009

Yard sale extravaganza
















Spring is here! In my little corner of the world, the weather is amazingly beautiful, the windows are open, birds are singing, and I am cleaning and organizing! It is so wonderful to clear out the clutter, whther it be dirt or stuff! All this clearing and cleaning has me motivated to get to that short list of things we need for the house. I have a final, overall picture of exactly how I'd love the house to be organized, exactly how I'd like it to look and what I need in order to get to that point. With hubby working and a tax refund in the bank, I am more than ready to get going and get done.

Today was a very successful yard sale day. It was really fun ( and very unusual) to go with a specific list, come home with several of the items on it, put them exactly where I intended them to go and start enjoying them right away. Two hours, start to finish!
One of the readers left a comment on my post about the freecycle Christmas dishes, suggesting I look for finishing pieces at garage sales now that I know what I'm looking for. Well, I took that to heart and put it in my list. Imagine my surprise when the FIRST thing I saw at the FIRST garage sale was a set of 8 soup bowls and 8 dessert plates to match the freecycle china--for $2.00!!! I honestly couldn't believe it. I'm pretty excited about that find!
The next thing on our list was a VCR. Ours bit the dust a couple of weeks ago. We could certainly do without one if we needed to, but all of the 2-year-olds favorite things are on VHS, so we figured we find a cheapie VCR at a garage sale to get us through the next year or so until we can freecycle the baby videos and VCR in one fell swoop. Well, we manage to find one for $5 and they threw in 10 grown-up videos ffor free, so we're happy with that. The videos were mostly the action-adventure Clint Eastwood kind of things that my hubby loves and I don't watch, so he's got something to watch when he's on his own, and we can donate them when he gets tired of them. Before I put them in the cabinet, I pulled 10 out to donate so that we don't get overloaded.
Item 3--I've been looking for some kind of cute little basket to corral our mail and variou bits of paper that land on the kitchen counter and/or need to be there temporarily. I found this cute little one--still with the World Market $9.99 price tag on it, for $2.
Item 4--we've been looking for a train table for our little guy forever!! Even on Craigslist they are a little pricy, but we've always had it on our list as something to snap up when we found the right deal. We found this for $20. The little guy is beside himself with joy! (and so is the big guy) I figure we can easily sell this when he's done with it for at least what we paid, so its free entertainment.
And last--a garden bench. We've been wanting one for the front yard to sit on when we are out watching the kids play. It was on my wishlist of things for my birthday in February, and hubby had yet to find anything I had asked for without buying anything new. I fell in love with this beautiful bench and hubby is sighing with relief that he has FINALLY gotten me something. We paid $45 for it.
I also got (but couldn't download pictures because I maxed out my allowed number) 2 rolls of shelf paper (on my list!) and some pretty candlesticks for the family room coffee table.
Now that all my pretty "new" things are in their places and functioning, I'm busy clearing out what we don't need. I have boxes in my bedroom for sorting, and hope to finish soon. Our weekend is full, however, with soccer and out-of-town guests and watching some kids while their parents are away, so I guess I'll have do what I can in the time I have, and relax and enjoy the weekend. :))

4 comments:

Susie Chadwick said...

wow, you got a great deal on that train table. We have one (handed down) and they are SO expensive.

2simplify said...

Thanks--I thought so too. We snapped it up as quick as we could--lucky we were early birds for once!!

Jenyfer Matthews said...

You got some really great items - so lucky to actually find what you were looking for! Congratulations :)

Anonymous said...

Ha ha! I just knew you'd find more Christmas china to match, but I didn't think it would be quite THAT fast!!!

I'm also terribly jealous 'cause it's just barely above freezing here and snow is forecast for next week. Uggh! I wanna go to a garage sale too!