Yard Sale 101

I am just wrapping up what might have been the most exhausting week of my SAHM life, or at least in the top ten. And that is saying something, folks.

I had a yard sale.

I know yard sales are pretty common place events. And they seem so simple. Deceitfully simple. Beware. They aren’t really simple at all. They are hours and hours of grueling hard work. Don’t let your neighbor’s neat little tables of knick knacks and neon dot stickers fool you. The premise of a yard sale is enchanting. People actually come to you to give you money for your unwanted junk and take it away. Far away. “This is brilliant,” you think. And it is. But if you are a yard sale ingenue, as I was, you will be surprised. So much time and so much energy consumed in crafting a successful yard sale. And if you have small children underfoot, it is all but impossible to pull off without tantrums (theirs and mine), crying (mostly mine) and sleep deprivation (just me).

I began cleaning out my house about three weeks prior to the event. We have lived in this house about three years and in those three years we have accumulated a heck of a lot of crap. Actually, we probably moved into the house with a heck of a lot of crap, but we were oblivious to this fact. We thought it very important to own a paperback copy of every book we’ve ever read, horde huge CD collections, and amass large quantities of comic books and antique glass. But we know better now.

We have kids.

And they don’t come with storage solutions. They do come with piles of blankets, and burp cloths, and bibs. And mountains of swings and bouncy seats and Exersaucers and onesies and socks and stuffed animals. Pretty soon all those shabby chic flea market finds and book collections are relegated to the attic, or the basement, or the seldom used foyer closet. They are soon joined by huge plastic Rubbermaid totes filled with outgrown baby clothes. Outgrown mommy clothes (pre-baby) follow. Then a changing table is added. Maybe some old baby toys. Eventually all dangerous or fragile objects will find a new home with the other misfits in the attic. And guess what? You have the makings of a great yard sale…and a humongous headache.

So my house gave birth to this giant mountain of junk, removed from drawers and closets and haphazardly thrown in dozens of storage bins and boxes now residing in our garage. I find that the sorting and the organizing and the pricing of said junk is brutal, backbreaking, horrible work. And it takes all of one entire day (sunrise to beyond sunset) and at least four people to get it accomplished before my deadline. But accomplish it we did. We raked in around $600 in three and half days days. I consider it a success, and I will even go so far as to say it was all worth it. I find more and more perks in clearing my house of the clutter. I am in the mood to clean and decorate and bond with my house again. I want to pamper it. It was sorely neglected these last two years and it suffered in the wake of our little baby boom.

But I find myself feeling a little sentimental, too.

I am actually missing all that “junk,” the relics of my daughters’ babyhood. Forget all the intensive labor, the emotional toil has been almost as difficult. I thought I was tired of the excess toys and baby clothes. But I was not really prepared to let it all go. Because how do you say goodbye to the sweet tiny onesies that clothed your sweet tiny newborns? How do you put a price on the Boppy pillow that supported them while they nursed? The receiving blankets that swaddled them? The dresses they wore to church for their dedications? I anguished over what to keep and what to toss. Because the truth is that every item is special and sacred. For a mother, every item is really a memento to save for later. For the days when they aren’t entirely dependent upon you, the axis of their small universe. The days when you can't quite remember just how small they were, or just how soft they were. My youngest will celebrate her first birthday next month, and I am saddened by how quickly it passed and how much I have already forgotten. My oldest will be three, and her infancy seems so long ago. The brevity of their first year is astonishing. With the exception of some keepsake items (one big storage bin full), most of their baby things are all gone. I do ache to think of the things I sold and won’t ever see again. But I know I can’t keep it all. And I know it really isn’t about the things they wore or spit up on. It is about the fact that my babies are not the small babies they once were. They are toddlers.

Lost and Found

Lost

The remote. It's always missing. I hate checking couch cushions as I usually find more than I wanted to find.

The gross out factor. If two years of poop and vomit fail to cure you of a weak stomach, nothing will.

Various hair bows, each costing between five and fifteen bucks (don’t tell my husband). They drop like flies around here.

Bottles. Also prone to mysterious disappearance.

Pride in personal appearance. Not completely gone, but dwindling.

Pacifiers. I believe there must be a trail of pacies throughout Central Arkansas that lead directly to our front door, a la Hansel and Gretel.

My mind. Last seen spring of 2007. Possible sighting in summer of 2008.

Self control, when it comes to dressing of little girls or decorating of little girls’ rooms.

My judgment of other women. You know, I really was the perfect mother before my children were born.

My certainty in the black/white world perspective. So much gray area.

Sleeping in. Weekends are nothing to a 10 month old and 2 year old.

My waist. It’s gone. Sigh.

Ability to afford Pottery Barn Kids.

Clean house. Maybe I will find it one day.

Self-doubt. Or at least most of it. Okay, some of it really is gone.

Found

Crayon scribbles in the pages of the novel I haven’t finished.

Terrible stains on upholstered seats of dining room chairs.

Confidence. Motherhood is not for the faint of heart.

Laundry. I swear, it breeds. My laundry baskets are nothing but orgies of clothing.

Tolerance for obnoxious cartoons and annoying toys, Bratz notwithstanding.

Disagreeable odor emanating from the Diaper Genie area of nursery.

Revived dedication to my heavenly Father, the perfect parent, and His Son, the perfect child.

Husband’s dirty socks tucked in cushions of couch. Ugh.

Unknown depths of compassion for mothers and children all over the world.

One set of purple and pink plastic play dishes, carefully placed in dishwasher with actual dirty dishes.

Reservoirs of patience.

Half eaten grilled cheese sandwich in drawer of living room inn table.

Disdain for so-called parenting experts and “sanctimommies.”

Sippy cup (previously missing) shoved under toddler’s bed, caked with old milk. Yes, I said caked.

Ability to stay up too late burning creative energy otherwise left to stagnate.

Adoration for Pottery Barn Kids.

Coffee addiction. Can’t go a day without.

Clutter Confessions

I am going to step out on a limb and reveal something I wish I could just keep to myself. It hurts my pride to reveal a weakness and a specific voice in my head is telling me not to. You may know that voice, too. Everyone has one. Mine sounds a little something like this. Don’t tell anyone! Everyone will know how inept you are. What will they think? Greg also shares this opinion, but I am choosing to ignore them both, possibly against my better judgment. Here I go.

I suck at household management.

There. I said it.

Short of boozing your breakfast, it might be the most unforgivable of SAHM sins, and it’s mine. I own it.

Now before you get the wrong impression, please note that my house is NOT a pit of despair. It is a nice house, and decently clean, if a bit cluttered and in perpetual need of mopping. My problem is the organizational aspects of home management, like menu planning, scheduled cleaning, paperwork, etc. I recognize that I am perhaps over reacting, since we do not live in squalor and my house is usually straightened. But I am constantly feeling a couple of steps behind, and I want to change. I see other moms who seem to have this all together and I want in on the secret. I myself used to be one but I somehow lost the skills. I want back in the club.

Before my second pregnancy, I was on top of things. I cooked every evening and I cleaned every day. I was efficient and organized. I had a routine and I stuck to it. And then I got pregnant with baby number two, and all of those skills? I haven’t seen them since.

The strange thing about this is that I am typically a very organized person. I have always been obsessed with lists and I have at least one list prepared on any given day. When I worked, my office was usually neat. As a student, I was meticulous. I assumed that when I chose to stay home my organizational skills would merge with my new life, but alas, I find myself still struggling. I managed to make it with one baby, but this second child has me begging for mercy.

And yet I do have periods of supremely organized living in which my house is sparkling, my clutter is put away, my junk drawers are purged, my meals are planned, my paperwork is sorted. The house will be a veritable oasis, a perfect model of organization.

And then the inevitable occurs.

We begin a super busy weekend. The kind where we are rushing breakfasts and bath times, stuffing diaper bags, searching for cell phones, ironing clothes, loading strollers, changing diapers; just trying to make it out the door with two unwilling babies and an arsenal of baby paraphernalia. The kind where we leave early (though ten minutes past the time we should have left) and get home late, too tired to pick up the chaos of the morning. Too exhausted to properly unload the inevitable baby baggage we brought back home with us.

The next day, we do it all over again.

Two or three consecutive days of this will do me in every time. The clutter builds, and so does my stress level. I am soon overwhelmed and overtired. And these babies, they are so ridiculously selfish! My children actually believe themselves entitled to regular meals, baths, naps, and supervised playtime. Believe it or not, they even forbid that I forsake them to take care of my household duties the way I would like to, which is to dive in and tackle it all. This business of cleaning a little at a time as the day goes on is just against my nature. I want to do it all at once, and do it thoroughly. It is the perfectionist in me.

This is the worst part. Sometimes I actually feel that I have to choose between the two. Clean babies or clean house? There are some days that I get my house clean at the expense of my kids. And there are a lot of days that I have well kept kids at the expense of my house. It seems either way I go, I am constantly trying to catch up on something.

I have made some progress these last few months, thanks to the motivating forces of Flylady and her system of organization. And I am planning a humongous garage sale soon, which should help. But I still relapse. And I still feel like the girl who missed this very important housekeeping class that all the other girls got to attend. And now that I have revealed my hideous secret, I am convinced that the other moms are going to whisper about me in the next MOPS meeting.

So this desperate housewife wants to know. How do you do it? Am I alone in this? How do YOU keep it all balanced? I know there are those among you that have menus planned months in advance. How do you stick to the menu, or do you? And how do you keep your home company clean at all times? How do you do it ALL? Share tips and strategies…or just commiserate with me if you can relate.