According to my bestie, Emily.
She wasn’t wrong. I had great stuff (too much stuff!), and I worked hard to promote the sale and make everything look appealing. Perhaps my biggest victory (and relief!) was having gotten everything set up before people started to arrive!
Didn’t it look nice?? I’d been waiting YEARS to have a yard sale, and when a local friend set a date for hers, I decided that Saturday was as good a day as any. So, August 19th (last weekend) it was!
Here’s how it started:
Can you believe I had that much stuff in my basement?!
I mean, in my defense, it was four years of baby and kid stuff piling up, plus all sorts of ‘house stuff’ that I’d been putting aside for some future yard sale. Purging the baby stuff is a great time to have a yard sale! Also, taking the child-locks off the kitchen cabinets has been AH-MAZ-ING.
I spent a few days organizing everything in the garage onto different tables. Thankfully I know enough people from whom I could borrow tables! I think I had seven?!
For some reason, I got it in my head that I should get pink tablecloths to make everything look nice. (I did not read that on the ‘how to have a good yard sale’ page I visited, but I think it was a good idea.) A few bucks at Dollar Tree (ok, $16 in materials) went a long way to make the sale look inviting: some colorful poster paper, glitter markers and tablecloths really jazzed it up!
The morning of the sale was beautiful! I could not thank God enough–I’d been praying about the weather for weeks, worried it might rain. My friend, Emily, saw the photos I posted on Facebook and encouraged me to post more. Once she dubbed it ‘the poshest yard sale ever,’ I think people really paid attention. I actually had multiple people come AFTER the sale to shop in the garage!
In the week following the sale, I slowly sorted through the remaining items, thoughtfully deciding where everything should go. One load of random items went to Goodwill, obviously. But almost everything remaining has been gifted to friends, clothes have been consigned, large items that didn’t sell have been posted to Facebook Marketplace, and some items went back into the basement (but not many!).
I actually put a bin together of baby toys that I could pull out anytime someone with a baby comes over to play, since Maelle’s toys will become less and less age-appropriate as she gets older. She and I took a small bag of toys to my chiropractor’s office, since I noticed their ‘baby toy basket’ was a little lacking. All the remaining board books will be delivered around our little village to the little free libraries in peoples’ front yards. Lastly, I’ve reached out to a pregnancy resource center to see about donating anything baby/mama-related that remains.
It seems like such a small thing, but it was the clothes that were the hardest to part with. Over the last four years, I would look at the too-small items I’d packed into bins in her closet and long for another baby who could wear them (which seems silly, since there is no guarantee that another baby would be a girl). But, God hasn’t seen fit to bless us with another child, and at some point, you just have to move on.
Again, thankfully I took REALLY good care of everything, so I can consign them and then use the credit to buy Maelle ‘new’ clothes, but I was still having all the feels. I also passed along bags of clothes to friends who have younger girls, knowing that seeing their daughters in Maelle’s old clothes would make me smile.
And, as my friend wisely said, “Holly, if you get pregnant, you can just buy new things.” Something about that was really freeing, especially when I thought about the big stuff, like the crib. Not that I would buy all new things, but more in the sense that IF that miracle were to occur, it wouldn’t matter if I had everything or nothing. Plus, all my friends are still in the baby years (they are all younger than I am!), so I’m sure there would be plenty of hand-me-downs!
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