We're gearing up for a garage sale we're holding at a friend's house. We've been throwing unwanted stuff into one closet generally, so we pulled all that out, tagged it and stacked it in the dining area. We also went through the house and pulled more clothes and other items to add to the pile.
The biggest thing we did was exorcise our addiction to book-collecting. We've always had trouble taking books off the shelves and saying we wanted to get rid of them, because who wants to get rid of books they like? So I had an idea. I pulled every single book off every shelf in the house and stacked them all on the bedroom floor. Then I made some rules: Make two stacks, one of definite keepers and one of "want to reads." Anything you don't feel really strongly about, leave on the floor.
This way made it much easier to get rid of books that we liked, were somewhat attached to but didn't feel like we needed to make our lives complete. We managed to leave two-thirds to three-quarters of all our books on the floor!
Then we divvied the not-kept books into two categories: likely to sell at used bookstore or online, and unlikely to sell--take to garage sale.
We took the likely-to-sell books and entered their ISBN numbers on half.com. If they hadn't sold recently or hadn't sold for at least $5, we put them in the "take to used bookstore" category. If they stood a good chance on half.com, then we listed them and put them on a bookshelf by the computer.
So now we've got a single layer of books on our bookshelves for the first time in years(!), several large bags of books to take to bookstores, and several crates and boxes of books to take to the garage sale. We'll do the bookstore first, and anything they reject will go to the garage sale as well.
It was hard as I'm really attached to books, but once I saw how many there really were, I felt claustrophobic and wanted to get rid of a bunch. Plus, the ones we kept we REALLY love, so it's going to give us a warm glow to look at our pared-down bookshelves full of classics tailored to our unique taste!
We also listed our futon craigslist and got a response right away. This couple came over and gave us $80 for it, then asked NT to disassemble it for them. Halfway through the process they decided it would never fit in their car, so they took their money and left us with a half-disassembled futon in our doorway. Silly kids. Oh well. Hopefully we'll get another response. We still have a loveseat-type thingie to list and hopefully get someone to cart away.
Major declutter in progress
August 4th, 2008 at 03:59 pm
August 4th, 2008 at 04:57 pm 1217869060
August 4th, 2008 at 06:18 pm 1217873919
Great job on the book declutter! I have to go through baby-clothes (my addiction - how can I ever part with the cute things that they wore? Exception: Vintage clothing of mine or DH and hand-crocheted sweaters by great grandmothers). My oldest daughter said once, "Gosh, Mom, if the next baby is a girl, you won't really dress her in all that old stuff?" She did have a point, and I might need to pare it down to one or two bins according to gender! Maybe I shall ride the wave of decluttering you started ...
August 4th, 2008 at 07:34 pm 1217878492
PS: Did that other momcents blogger pressure you to change the name of yours? I notice you spell it "sents" now...
August 4th, 2008 at 09:13 pm 1217884427
I thought it might be some copyright infringement as she apparently owns the "rights" to the name, rather than have some confrontation - I changed a letter. I'm still the same old mom(c)sents at heart!
August 4th, 2008 at 09:43 pm 1217886187