Friday, April 17, 2009

Easy Rider and the Rummage Sale

In southern Wisconsin, the weather is marvelous, simply marvelous today. Seventy degrees, no wind and pale blue skies add up to perfect biking weather. I threw out my normal speed goals during my ride and enjoyed myself for a change. At least for today, I was an easy rider.

I've focused enough on running and biking and swimming for a while. I instead direct you to the remainder of my post: matters of rummage.

Tomorrow morning, we're (meaning Lon) going to put up fluorescent orange signs at nearby street corners announcing rummage for sale. We were forced into staging this event because our basement has become a disaster area. We brought the items we knew we could live without upstairs and out into the garage last weekend. As always, lots of things aren't so easy to part with. For instance, an endless number of my clothes items which I haven't worn for three years or up to ten years suddenly look like something I'd go out and buy tomorrow; I simply refuse to give up a beautiful maple desk which relocated to the basement twenty years ago. "Why, my parents gave it to me when I graduated from high school," I plead. Lon says nothing but I know what he's thinking. My husband and I play tug-of-war with almost everything at this point. I tend to be more conservative while he loves to get rid of things and go out and buy new. He'd put me in the garage with a price sticker if I'd sit still long enough. I offered to leave for the weekend so he could run the sale. He could put stickers on all the things HE wanted gone. As a result, I know we'd have a successful sale. For me, out of sight is often out of mind. If I don't see a buyer walk away with an item of mine, I'll never know it's gone.

Lon's not going to let me off that easy. He thinks he needs me. (When will he ever learn?) We didn't get an ad in the shopping news for this weekend, but it will be in next weekend. Lon thinks that as long as we're going to be home tomorrow, we might as well try to sell a few things. A few signs in the neighborhood should direct some folks our way. I wonder if we'll have anything of value left when people come next weekend in reponse to the ad. Lon says, "If we haven't got much left, so what. People can come and then turn around and go. No big deal." So I'm giving up the fight and saying, "Whatever." That's what I've decided to think about the whole event. Whatever.

I should go through some more things in my closet. I'll consider the necessity of each item. If it doesn't totally trip my trigger, I'll toss it in the "to go" box and say, "Whatever."

Wish me luck.

1 comment:

Rob said...

Hey good luck with your rummage sale!

My wife and I are going through a similar process at our home - in hopes of paring down our clutter. I relate very much to your tug-of-war you mentioned.

For us, the changes we've seen though have been worth it ... with breathing room in our home finally beginning to make it's presence known as a tangible benefit rather than an elusive, partially remembered dream.

So once again ... good luck to you!