3700 Square Feet of Garage Sale. Is that right?

To say I am overwhelmed right now seems trite, so let's just say I feel drowning in a sea of camel fur.  Does that give you a better idea?  How about drowning in camel hair that the health department once wanted to confiscate from my grandmother?  Yes, there is a story there, but not now. . .

It feels weird to say that my grandmother died recently.  She hadn't spoken to me in years.  I sent her an invite to my wedding thinking maybe there would be some reconciliation there, but the only relative I had was my dad's step-sister.  That's another story as well. . .

For the last few years, I have wanted to move. Badly.  Like really bad.  I inherited the house my mother -- she and Dad bought it when my husband was only 3 years old.  That's how long I have lived here. (I'm a tad older than he is.)  It's the site of where the priest said Last Rites for my mother, lifeless on the floor, the site where I watched Dad leave after almost 25 years of marriage to my mother, and countless other memories, and it seems the bad memories outweigh the good.  So I've been frantically selling on eBay for years.  (That's an affiliate link because disclosure. Plus there will be more affiliate links in this post.)  I went to my grandmother's estate auction and bought three carloads and one truck load full of stuff.  That's all from the place she was currently living.  My uncle (who I am starting to become friends with, but again, another story. . .) My uncle is wanting to turn the place where my grandmother once lived into a hunting cabin.  Grandma was a crafter.  Some of the stuff can be valuable, some of the stuff is just trash, and some of the stuff is just nothing but confusing.  (I even found a bouquet she made of used plastic spoons nestled in a coffee can because someone somewhere thought the idea was clever.)  But knowing there is some good stuff in there that would be tossed out, we are bringing it home and sorting through it.


My husband and I had planned on having a garage sale this weekend.  Took the time off months ago, got the yard sale permit, bought pricing stickers, a tagging gun so tags wouldn't fall off clothes, and even a square reader so I could accept credit cards at this massive declutter site. All I had to do was hope the weather cooperated.  Thursday evening, the weather apps (I checked three because I didn't want to miss anything!) -- the weather apps said rain.  Thunderstorms.  All. Damn. Weekend.  Damn!  So Friday came, and I looked at the app, and it showed rain showers in the next hour.  I kept checking, thinking we could set up late, but by late afternoon, the app still showed sunny for now, but thunderstorms in the next hour.  Okay, day one down the drain.  (Eight in the evening, the highly anticipated thunderstorm arrived.)

So, Friday evening, hopeful.  But every hour of Saturday was to be "light rain showers", "thunderstorms", "heavy rain showers", or "scattered rain showers".  So another executive decision, and we decide not to chance it yesterday which turned out to be a perfect day for a garage sale.  Whatever.

Now we have over 50 boxes of stuff in our garage.  When we do garage sale, we OVERdo.  It's not just a table or two with a few things scattered.  No, I've seen flea markets with multiple vendors with less stuff than we have.  I used my coupon from eBay for having a store about a year ago to buy 50 boxes that were 18 inches by 12 inches by 12 inches.  All of them are filled.  Every single one of them is packed.  When I say over fifty boxes, those are just the ones I'm counting.  There's other tubs, clothes racks, stacks of books, boxes, piles, and of course furniture. 

So, one of my husband's few weekends off and we watch the weather and don't even go outside.  Instead we listed on eBay.  We sorted through more stuff from my grandmother's estate and priced more for a yard sale.  (We have a teal dress with oversized buttons and shoulder pads should anyone be interested for a 1980s party.) 

After a highly anticipated yard sale, we still have stuff.  I mean, I know we'll make a lot of money from this stuff, but I'm already sick of it and we haven't even set up the first table.  I think next year we'll just rent somewhere and take everything to that place.  We don't have the table set up here anyway.  I don't think our drive way can handle over 3700 feet of garage sale goodies -- that is if I am doing my math correctly -- but I'm probably not because that's more square feet of garage sale stuff than our house even has.

I'm just hoping that our four car garage (without any vehicles in it) can handle however much more stuff we pile into it before we have our sale. 

Yeah, so I'm overwhelmed.  And let's not even start talking about how much stuff I'm trying to list on eBay right now.  I want to get things listed, make money, get the stuff out of here, but yet make as much as possible.  I had someone upset with me yesterday on eBay and call me greedy.  (I'll take that as a compliment because my research showed my item being the only one for sale on the entire internet and I'm going to price accordingly and see what offers come in.) 

But I want this yard sale stuff out of here -- and before anyone just says to donate it, there's so much time and such invested in it already that I might as well plan on a sale next summer.  I want to reclaim my living room from the musty odor of 1970s crafts.  I want to move into a house that doesn't have memories at every corner.  I want to have all my t-shirt designs uploaded on Amazon Merch.

And I just want to sleep and feel like I'm further along in life than I am.  But for now, I'm going to take a nap and it's not even noon.  Sometimes pre-noon naps are the best.  And I'll leave you hanging until next time for the worst crafting instruction booklet ever published.  Until then, night night!