As we've been
going along, another project that was on the list was to have a couple of yard sales to try to winnow down our belongings to just what we'll need down the road for a one bedroom apartment when we return. Sounds fairly simple, right? Well, in actuality it really wasn't when we began to look through everything we owned and found some possessions we really enjoyed having but knew we didn't have room to store. This definitely brought in an emotional element that I wasn't prepared for as we had to make some hard choices about what to keep and what to sell.After 16 years of accumulation, this turned out to be a somewhat
Herculean task. It's rather amazing to think of all the stuff that tucks into nooks and crannies around the house - I'm sure you can relate. Man, were we in for a shock when we finally pulled everything together! We took a couple of pictures of everything that we had for the yard sale just so we could remind ourselves how easy it is to accumulate so much stuff without being aware of it and to hopefully prevent it from happening again. You can probably imagine from the pictures how overwhelming this project felt at times. Once we got over the initial shock, though, we then got to move into the best part - pricing everything. If I had a
nickle for every time one of us said "how much do you think for this one?"..... if I never see a little green round sticker again it will be too soon!We ended up having
two yard sales, the first inside the house - more of an estate sale I guess - and the next one outside. As luck would have it, the sale held inside was on a beautiful, sunny day and the one held outside was on a nice, rainy day. Go figure, right??? All 
in all, though, between Craigslist and yard sales, we were able to sell a fair amount of stuff and the rest will be picked up for donation this week. I'll be the first to admit that the process of clearing everything out can be hugely frustrating but having gotten through that part, we fell so very unburdened - now that's priceless!
