Another of my occasional forays into stories of my own life …

As regular readers know, my husband and I plan to move from DeLand, FL, to Kettle Falls, WA, in April. We are downsizing to the smaller house we are building in Kettle Falls, so we knew we wanted to purge a lot of our stuff. Our neighborhood was planning a big yard sale this weekend, so we decided to join in. Now, I have the world’s worst yard-sale karma; I have never been successful at staging them. But I figured if Randall took the lead, I couldn’t jinx it too much (I also thought that I would jinx the Florida Gators if I watched their SEC championship game against Alabama — so I didn’t — but apparently I got that backwards).

We literally worked on this yard sale just about every waking hour for nine days straight. The second my mother left Thanksgiving dinner, we started dismantling the lovely and tasteful home (if I do say so myself) we’ve been remodeling for 17 years. Here are five lessons I learned from the experience:

1. Possessions can create a kind of prison: When I wondered on Twitter why we had saved all the stuff we had, a friend made the tongue-in-cheek observation that a new season of the A&E show “Hoarders” is starting. Well, we don’t quite reach hoarder status, but Randall and I are both packrats. We have accumulated an enormous amount of STUFF in 25 years of marriage, plus our single lives before that. One of the biggest reasons I felt we would be bicoastal and maintain homes in both Florida and Washington was that I felt it would be just way too overwhelming to deal with all our crap. Once we realized that Kettle Falls was our future, it seemed insane to be beholden to our possessions. And the more we started to purge, the more free I began to feel. It feels so fantastic to simplify. There’s also a sense of wanting a fresh start. Decorative items and furniture that we still love aren’t hard to part with because we want things to be fresh and new in our new life in the great West. I also began to acutely realize the utter mindlessness with which I acquired possessions. So many things I bought simply because I could. I failed to question whether I really needed something, whether it would give me pleasure, whether it had lasting value. This mindlessness was especially true of gifts. While I pride myself on clever, creative, and thoughtful gift-giving, another dimension for me has been wretched excess — giving gifts just for the sake of giving them without really thinking about what the gift would contribute to the recipient’s life.
2. Circumstances can change your relationship with things. Twice in my 20s, my residence was burglarized, and prized possessions were stolen. From those experiences, I learned not to place as much importance on possessions as I once had. Apparently that lesson didn’t stick. But I had my next epiphany while spending the summer in Kettle Falls living in our RV while we build our house. As I wrote here, I found I really didn’t miss any of my myriad possessions back in Florida. I had all I needed. A year ago, purging the many (many, many, many) possessions we put up for sale in the yard sale would have been unthinkable. We filled 40 cartons of books to sell, probably 80 percent of the books we own. I’m an inveterate book collector, but I had read only a small percentage of them. My fantasy was that I would read every book in retirement (or I would go to prison where I’d have little to do but read). It doesn’t seem worthwhile, however, to schlep 40 cartons of books to the West Coast for a scenario that may never happen (especially the prison scenario). I had a large two-drawer lateral file cabinet filled with my notes from college — and would you believe high school. Realizing that I had never once referred to these notes since filing them, I purged them so I could sell the filing cabinet. I collect teapots and had amassed quite a few. I held onto some favorites but was able to part with others. And then there were my “soap-opera boxes.” Have you ever noticed that on soap operas — and many other TV shows — when a gift is given, the recipient doesn’t tear into the wrapping paper but simply lifts a wrapped box top off a wrapped box bottom? About a decade ago, I had the idea to create my own collection of soap-opera boxes. They would be eco-friendly because they could be reused, and they would make gift-wrapping easier (for years, I had had conducted all-night wrapping marathons a couple of days before Christmas). I had a whole closet filled with these boxes, and I stuffed nine large garbage bags of boxes to sell at the yard sale.
3. Yard sales are very much susceptible to Murphy’s Law. Since we got back to Florida on Nov. 1, we’ve had rain maybe once. But a few days before the sale, we learned that rain was predicted for the exact days of the sale. Weather forecasting is, of course, an inexact science anywhere, but especially in changeable Florida; naturally however, this forecast was dead on. The rain started about an hour into the first day of the sale and just got more and more torrential, bringing cold (for Florida) temperatures and lasting well into the second day of the sale. We rain-proofed as well as well could; sales areas were either covered or inside the house. Surprisingly, we still had a good first day of the sale and made the bulk of our sales then. The second day, however, brought just a trickle of nickel-and-dime customers. We also learned at the end of the second day that the rest of the neighborhood had bailed on their part of the yard sale and taken down their signs. Despite many forces working against us for this sale, we did pretty well.
4. Yard sales are stressful and a test of relationships. I didn’t agree with Randall’s pricing strategy. I was resentful that I was the one stationed outside on the first wet, cold day of the sale. Randall resented the fact that he had been the only collecting boxes during the prep (especially since the produce guy seemed to be coming on to him). I was also unnerved by the chaos of the preparations. Our adult children could have been more helpful with the preparations. So, we all had some issues to work out by the end of the sale — but fences seem to be mended.
5. Leftovers are pretty easy to deal with. Even if we hadn’t had miserable rain, I knew we’d still have a lot of stuff leftover — simply because we put so much stuff on sale — three full rooms of sales space plus several outdoor venues. I estimate it was about two-thirds of our possessions. So, I planned a strategy for dealing with the leftovers. Greyhound Pets of America, a greyhound rescue organization, is a favorite charity dating back to the two wonderful greyhounds we had in the 1990s. They hold a couple of fundraising yard sales every year, so we offered our stuff to the group. They picked up the bulk of it right after the sale and are picking up more today. In many cities (including both DeLand and Kettle Falls), Habitat for Humanity runs a thrift store; the DeLand store will get our furniture leftovers. For the few types of items that neither organization wanted — like the famed soap-opera boxes — The Freecycle Network, a nonprofit organization and a movement of people interested in keeping good stuff out of landfills, provides a way to offer the stuff for free to folks who will come pick it up. I think the only item, that, alas, may end up in a landfill is a bunch of old VHS tapes.

So, bottom line, I’m glad we did the yard sale even though it was flawed. I’m grateful to be one step closer to purging the bulk of our possessions and moving. I also hope to be a much more mindful consumer in the future and really think about each future purchase to consider whether I truly need it.