The Purging of STUFF

Our house has been undergoing a serious "purging" over the last 2 weeks. We just have so much, STUFF, you know? Just stuff...it's everywhere, I look!  Stuff, Stuff, STUFF.


We live in smaller home (for our family size) and we often talk about how we wished we had more room.  But, the simple truth is, we do have room...it's just that STUFF is taking up all our room!

Finally, after a late night talk, Ryan and I got serious.  The next day, we went into "purge" mode and decided to "half our stuff".

This wasn't just casual "Spring cleaning", this was serious, no emotions, "just let it go" cleaning like we'd never done before.

My first spark of inspiration came from my friend Amy, at Raising Arrows, who has been blogging every Saturday as she "halves her stuff" room by room.  Well, we caught onto her vision about 3 months late, but caught up in two weeks!

~~So what'd we do?

Well, first of all, we decided to "practice what we preach".

You see, one of my boys is always saying, "But I need..." 
To which I always say (and now he quotes...), "No, that's what you want.  What you need is air, shelter, sleep, clothing, food, water and Jesus."

So, we simply stopped riding the fence on certain toys, clothes that we've hung onto that get worn too infrequently, books we'll never read again, etc.  And we even took it a step further...

We took a spin on the Amish saying for clothing:

"One for wash, One for wear,

One for play and One to spare"

We have tubs full of cute outfits and matching accessories.  But being a practical momma, I usually gravitate for clothes that can be mixed and matched.  Simple, solid, practical. 

So, we accumulated 15 trash sacks of clothes as we took each age's "tub" and simplified to 7 play outfits, 5 dress outfits and 4 pajamas for both winter and summer.

Yes, those 15 trash sacks sat on our front porch for a few days...

I'm sure our poor, sweet neighbors were less than thrilled!

And let me tell ya...

It felt SO good to condense all our STUFF we had in storage, down to half of what it was before!

Around the house, we literally went room by room and just started throwing stuff into boxes.  We don't use it?... we don't need it.  Can't remember the last time we touched it?...we don't need it.  Etc.

~~The hard part
We had to resolve to not let our my emotions get too involved.  My love language is gifts, so I remember almost every item, who gave it to us, if it's clothes~when a certain kid wore it...and on and on.

Plus, I kept struggling with the thought that we were being ungrateful for all the blessings we had recieved.  But the Lord kept reminding me that people gave us these things to bless us, and if they are no longer a blessing (but a burden, taking up space we need) then it was time to let them go.

So I had to "put on my brave face" and just think practically...which is not an easy endeavor for me!

~~The fun part
Some people don't think of garage sales as very much fun...but I do!!!  We had a one-day yard sale.  I put an ad in the paper and 2 simple, paper signs up on busier streets and set our stuff out.

I went for SIMPLE pricing.  All clothes, all shoes $.50.  We weren't out to make money, so I priced low in hopes that more would get purchased!  And it WORKED!!!

Almost all the toys/decor were $.50-$1.00. 

Books, VHS tapes, DVD's and CD's were $.25 (I told you I wasn't in it for the money...I wanted to get RID of this stuff!)

We had four "big" items (a TV, an old laptop, a DVD player and a camera) but everything else was small "piddley" stuff.

And guess what?  We made almost $800 dollars in those 6 hours!!!

Pricing low was worth it (pun intended!) and now we are a lighter, happier home with more room to run, play and prepare to GROW even more!!!