Monday, June 21, 2010

Battle of the Purge . . .

This is, in a sense, a continuation or update from an earlier post, "Joining In". I had said at the end of that post that I had since moved onto the basement in our battle to purge our home of any and all things non-needful or non-used. The hubby and I dug right in and went through every square inch of the basement. Every box, tote, anything that could hold or store something. We made piles; one for trash, one for keeping, one for selling/donating. I know what your thinking, why go through the trouble of a yard sale. That is exactly what my husband said. He is disgusted with the whole idea of having a yard sale and I just kindly told him that it would be nice to get some money out of all the things we were getting rid of. I also reminded him that it would be me and me alone that would do EVERYTHING for the yard sale.

The piles grew and grew and grew. I was SHOCKED at all the stuff we had that was just junk and what was not to be kept. There was so much! I went through all of our DVD's and CD's and got rid of about 95% of the CD's and about 60% of the movies. The movie average is low because about 75% of the movies we kept are Living Scripture movies or movies made by the LDS church. When my husband saw how many movies I had in the "get rid of" pile, he questioned it. I told him why I didn't like this movie or that and he agreed, there is better.


In the end, we hauled off about 400 lbs of TRASH! It was crazy how much there was. I did have a yard sale and was able to sell about a third of everything there. I made $150 in the 5 hours that I had it and felt it was worth it. We will be putting that in our trampoline fund. (One of the downsides to living "in town" is not having all the room to just go, go, go.)

After the sale, I loaded our Expedition up with all the boxes of things to donate and drove them promptly to the local thrift store. It feels so good to have it gone! So, farewell music from our teenage years in the late 80's and early 90's that was never appropriate to begin with. Goodbye stamps and other scrapbooking supplies that were lovingly used for a couple of years but not even looked at for the last three years. So long to all the piles and piles of DVD's that were watched 1, 2, maybe 3 times and never looked at again. The list goes on and on and on. I am glad to be rid of it and I actually think I lost a few pounds in the process. Enjoy!

2 comments:

jeannie said...

Way to go guys!! I think the hardest part is the emotional attachment that I have to things. Like our XBox that never gets played but don't want to sell because we got it as a bowl gift. Dumb, I know. I think the most liberating part of the whole process is overcoming those emotional attacements to "things" that really are serving no good purpose in our lives.

Being A Mother Who Knows said...

Way to go Googs! It is so wonderful to get rid of our stuff. It was really sickening to me when I realized all the junk I had wasted our money on. I am trying to do better now! I think despite our drastic purge that we will need to purge again. I hope I've learned my lesson on buying junk though.

Thanks for the motivation to keep weeding down to the BEST.

: ) Deanna