Selling our lives away

We were invited recently to partake in a community sale yesterday morning, so I spent all day Friday going through our things--mostly clothes, baby items, and wedding gifts--and pricing them for sale. It was a huge task and took me all day long. I priced as many things as I thought would fit into my parents' car. (We don't have a car, and my dad had agreed to transport our stuff to the sale.) They have a little station wagon, and somehow we managed to fit everything in.

David agreed to stay home with TImothy to allow me to work the sale, but about a half hour before we were to leave, he got called from the hospital and discovered that he was on call. (Each month they had out a call schedule, but it's always a few days late.) Since we're leaving in 3-1/2 weeks, he had told the chief resident that he wouldn't take any more calls. After all, he won't get paid for them. But there had been a misunderstanding, so David had to stay home and take the call. So we packed Timothy into the car with all the stuff, and Mom agreed to watch him at the sale.

We got to the sale later than I'd have liked (my parents had had morning visitors who delayed them at the last minute), so I was still setting up while people were pawing through our items. We were assigned two square plastic card tables side by side, with an umbrella in one. Thank goodness for that umbrella! It turned out to be quite a warm day, despite its being January and dry season.

The wedding gifts I'd brought to the sale were all dishes of some sort. We were already using three sets of dishes--two of which we sold as used--but the rest were in boxes and still brand-new. They went like hot-cakes! My kitchen utensils, too, were snapped up right away. The other stuff took longer to sell, but by 12:15, we'd gotten rid of at least two-thirds of our stuff. Yeah! And we made over $350! Very successful, I'd say. We did come home with quite a bit still, but if we don't sell it, we'll either take it with us or give it away. I'm not too worried. A lot of people lost their homes in the recent unrest, so I'm sure our things will be put to good use.

A Dutch family came by after the sale to pick up some of our furniture, too. We had to scramble to get it all cleaned out before they arrived! But we managed. And they somehow fit it all into their van. Phew! We sold our hutch, so now we have our dishes on a bookshelf, the way we did for the first 8 months we were married. And we sold our TV stand, nightstand, and bedside dresser. So there's a lot of stuff on the floor! Tomorrow I'll have to start sorting that as well. Fun fun fun!