the goodbye continues...
{ written saturday, july 11, 2015 } today was not a regular goodbye. it wasn't a sad goodbye. it wasn't even a long goodbye. today was a goodbye that's been 23 yrs in the making. today we said goodbye to our stuff. today was garage sale day.
hubby and I had decided more than a year ago that we needed to downsize. there's only 3 of us really with our youngest son still at home and about to enter high school { my daughter is finishing up her last semester at university this month and will be flying the coop herself soon enough } so we knew that most of the furniture in our 5 -bedroom house would be going.....even all the beds but one. no, really!
the work to pull off a successful garage sale can be endless and sometimes grueling. it's one of the reasons we always chose not to take part in our neighbourhood's bi-annual sale and why, over the years, we've always chosen instead to donate anything we no longer needed, wanted or just wasn't serving it purpose for us anymore........like a 5-bedroom house. duh! we're selling that too. { do ya happen to need a house in a nice neighborhood? pm me }
over the last few weeks, in our quest to take as little as possible with us in our #movetopdx { we're renting a truck, packing and driving it cross country ourselves }, we've gone thru each room in our house and were ruthless with the purging. what wasn't absolutely necessary for survival in portland or was past its prime { like our 10 yr old beds } did not make the cut. sentimentality aside, lots of items got put into the donation / sell / recycle { or dump } list.
which led us to today.
9am - 4pm ....a somewhat early start and boy did the people show up. yay for us but oh was it a long and tiring day. weird things occurred { some way too weird and/or gross to tell here }. neighbors came by to check out stuff but i knew it was also a chance to say goodbye. most of our"stuff" got sold and i'm pleased to say went to good homes, even the garage fridge, peaking out in the pic above, that we nicknamed "gridge" { get it? } who was so good at holding the overflow of food and beer went to take up his new place of residence in someone else's garage, lol......long forever to keep things refreshingly cold.
ahhh.....you know the old saying.....one man's trash is another man's treasure.
we ended early, about 3pm, mainly because the open garage door which faces west is directly in view of the hot afternoon sun and it was becoming like a oven in there despite the fan blowing on full blast. everything that remained, which was mostly household nick-knacks, was packed up into the back of the car for an immediate trip to goodwill.
nothing that wasn't absolutely necessary, remember.
plus we had already both decided ahead of time that nothing would be brought back into the house if it didn't get sold. there were still some bits of furniture and household items left plus a ping pong table...those items had been sold already and were waiting on their new owners to pick them up.
truth be told, i have never like doing garage sales. ever. for me, the rewards don't usually match the output necessary. today however, today's goodbye was good.
new adventures await. on, on.
toodles y'all,
G
#movetopdx #portlandbound #houseforsale