It started as a simple enough project. After years of watching E’s toys spill over into every room in the house, we decided to convert our never-used front room/pseudo office into her playroom. Doing that required getting rid of some furniture, moving other pieces, moving toys and getting rid of rarely used ones.

That “simple” project has now spiraled into to an all-out firesale at our house. As you probably know, you can’t just move stuff around when there’s no room to move it. We live in a 1940s bungalow in Florida, which means no basement, no attic, no storage. Our tiny one-car garage houses EVERYTHING from suitcases to Christmas decorations to bikes to lawn stuff. It’s packed to the gills. I’ve resisted a full cleaning for the past couple years because that would require some big family decisions.

Well ready or not, that decision has been made — we’re not having any more kids. I won’t go into this moral struggle for us into great detail at this time, because, frankly, I’m too tired. But we’ve decided that it’s time to let go of the exersaucer, let go of the Leap Frog activity table and to let go of ALL of E’s baby clothes.

So I spent all day sorting, stacking and tagging her old baby clothes.

I’m not going to lie, tears were shed. I just can’t believe how fast the past 2 1/2 years have gone.

While I worked on that, DadJovi started clearing out the garage. We decided pretty quickly that we’re going to have a yard sale next weekend, so he was tasked with finding anything that could be sold. Pretty quickly our lawn looked like this:

No, my bike is NOT going. It just needed to come out so other stuff could be moved.

And like every child before her, E. suddenly rediscovered her old toys. I’m blaming her massive head cold (the poor baby, is SO sick. Hoping to get in to see our pediatrician tomorrow or Tuesday. She is not improving at all. If anything her cold is getting worse) but she thought that she could still fit on this ride:

If she doesn’t start improving on her trike skills, we may have to hold onto this one. Somehow, knees hitting the ground and all, she zipped up and down the sidewalk on this low rider.

DadJovi and I had a tense weekend. We have very different ideas of how to execute a project. I like to look around, think about it, make a little progress, and think some more. He’s like a bull and just likes to charge into the project. One of our points of contention revolved around our old laptop. He wanted to just chuck it in the garbage. The reason that it’s our old computer is that its hard-drive got fried (like 4 years ago), but I just contended that we should either recycle it or figure out how to erase all of its memory.

DadJovi had different plans:

Yup, that’s an axe. Yup that’s our old computer. Yup that’s how he solved that debate. I’m pretty sure he was picturing my face on that keyboard.

I needed to escape for a bit so I took a pile of clothes to sell at Once Upon a Child. I was pretty psyched to get a check for $52! And the stuff they rejected went back in our yard sale pile. I still have yet to figure out their buying practices. Some of the items they didn’t want were never worn or worn once (with no stains). Whatevs.

So, I apologize in advance, but I’m going to be focused on yard sale prep all week and it may spill over here. And I’m pretty sure DadJovi and I may be at odds all week as we make final decision on the go or no items.

What are your yard sale tips? I’m really struggling with pricing items right now. I’m checking out Craig’s List to see what items like the Leap Frog table, Bumbo, etc are going for these days.

I’ve only ever had one yard sale and it was so hard. You need eyes in the back of your head and I could not believe how much people want to barter over everything! I’m a little nervous about manning all of this by myself. DadJovi will be here but he’ll be on E. duty. I’ve got one thing working in my favor though. At my last yard sale, I didn’t have a kid yet. If I’m on no sleep, I’d just LOVE to see some of these people try to mess with MomJovi! They’re not going to know what’s coming at them!