Trimming down the house!

So, I was sorting socks this morning and turned on the TV to have something to watch while I matched. So I popped on Discovery and discovered it’s Infomercials before 8 am. Ridiculous!

So, over to TLC where they are showing Clean Sweep. This is good, I love me some Clean Sweep. If I didn’t live in an apartment, I’d have them over for sure. I only have one beef with the show. Starting with I believe season 2, the people having the garage sale each choose something of the other’s to give away to charity if they sell less then the other. The winner gets to keep their item. I have seen some real douchey moves where the wife or husband picks out some beloved childhood toy or something that they can’t stand, and you can see the look on the other’s face when they lose it.

On the other hand, sometimes you can see the couple going “Oh, yes, he just loves this giant statue of Admiral Nelson with a clown nose. It’s his favorite!” to try and circumvent the process. This is appropriate as I have a very fat house right now. In other words, I have to slim down a bit, but with stuff.

I have a crapload of stuff to get rid of, and, thanks to my cousin, and some happy circumstances, it looks like I will have a little extra space to expand and really sort out my crap, I mean fine merchandise, and get the hell rid of it.

The way I see it, I have five categories of stuff in storage

1) Collectibles (to be sold via ebay or Craig’s List or whatever. Meaning it’s too niche or high end to try and garage sale or take to the Flea Market)
2) Garage sale/flea market items (to be sold at, oh I don’t know, a garage sale or flea market)
3) Stuff we’re keeping (other than my kid’s toys and clothes, this isn’t going to be all that much I don’t think. Oh, and our bikes!)
4) Stuff that’s perfectly functional, but I will never be able to sell, but is way too good to just be thrown out. (I generally leave these types of things in the laundry room with a nice big sign saying “free” on ‘em. They go very quickly. I got a couple really good books this way too!)
5) Crap (as stated on the package. Crap that needs to be chucked.)

Once I can really spread out and sort and repackage these items appropriately, it’ll be a lot easier to sell stuff, because I will know what I have. I ought to see if I can mooch a hand truck from someone as mine pretty much disintegrated last year. Being I got it for free* I can’t complain.

I hope that by May, I can have everything properly organized. The crap will be gone, everything that’s give-away-able will be given away, and the sellable stuff will be selling, somewhere or other!

I wish I still had all the metal shelves that were at my parent’s house. I knew I was gonna need them someday, dagnabbit!

Addendum:
I bought a banana on the way to work today, because we were out of fruit. It’s kind of awful, and is like eating banana-flavored foam. I mean, I’m full from it, but believe me, it’s not the best banana I have ever eaten, for sure.


*I was trying to find a new way to go home from the doctors a couple years back and got pretty lost. As I made a u-turn there was a guy wheeling a load of trash to the curb. There was a lot of furniture and he saw me looking and said “Please, take what you like, it’s all free!” and, quite jokingly I said “Well, what I really need is a hand truck!”

He laughs and says “Well, here you go! I just got a new one!” So I came home with a free hand truck. You can’t beat that.