As anyone who knows me knows, I’ve been crazy busy selling things on FB.  It started as my way to put the family building days behind us.  I had been re-thinking my thoughts on having a third baby for obvious reasons (life is easy with two, sleepless nights, frustrating days, etc.), but when Dr. H advised against it due to my uterine situation, I went into purge mode.  I saw no reason to keep those things around because they’re just taking up space for no good reason.  I’d heard about selling stuff on FB, but I had no idea how it would go.

It’s gone great.  You should see my house!

In February, my aunt asked me if we knew of any short-term leases in our city because her daughter was working hard at acquiring an awesome internship for the summer (side-note, my cousin is insanely talented in design and art, and is highly regarded so we knew she’d get the gig).  Of course I offered up our basement because duh – I’m not letting them spend a dime on rent if they don’t need or want to.  It was February, so we figured we had “lots of time” to get ready.  I was already in purge mode so we figured I’d just keep on going and eventually, the 5th bedroom would be cleaned out and ready for her by summer.

It’s summer.  She’s moving in next Tuesday!

My cousin is staying with us for 8 weeks, and the day she leaves, my Australian comes to spend 10 days with us – so 9.5 solid weeks of having a house guest begins next Tuesday.  Needless to say, we knew we would have space for them, but we also knew it would take a lot of work to get things ready.  This work fell solely on me because the crap in that room was all mine.  We had a huge “chicken before the egg” situation because we needed to free up space to move my crap into, but how were we going to free up space when we weren’t sure what all had to go and where it had to go?

The baby clothes tubs were already out in the living room because I was prepping them for sale, but so many other things had to go too.  Because my FB sales were going great with baby clothes and gear, I decided to tackle the pantry first (odd, I know, but it was a serious problem and I needed to know what from there, had to go downstairs or in the garage before I could figure out what from the basement would have to be sold/tossed out or kept).  The pantry was easy – the big things sold in minutes (bread maker, fryer, cake pans) and it’s been in tip-top shape for months now, with no new accumulation of junk in there.  That’s a HUGE win!

Like I said, baby gear was flying out of our house so the garage shelves were being cleaned out almost daily.  We had my grandma’s old silver sitting out there so I figured, let’s sell that too.  (All of the family had already gone through it and I was tasked with taking care of the rest.)  The silver didn’t sell quickly, but the biggest piece sold and the rest takes up a box, so we’re good with that!  We delivered the last of the things my family members wanted, so that freed up about 2 Rub.berm.ade 14 gallon tubs.  The rest of the garage is Hottie’s job – I’ve done what I can do!

I started tackling the 5th bedroom and sold all most of my craft stuff within hours of posting them, and that freed up 2 tubs of stuff.  Slowly, the room was cleared out and I finally went through the filing cabinet to decide what to keep, and what to shred, last week.  A huge filing cabinet’s inhabitants were reduced to just one tub of things to keep.  With that done, Hottie said, “sell that cabinet.”  It sold within 5 minutes for $20.  Oh, the space!

We have a sofa sleeper that we have in our basement that guests sleep on, but we just couldn’t expect these ladies to sleep in a living room for 9+ weeks, so our goal was to get that 5th room cleaned out and move the sofa sleeper into there.  As I was doing all of my work, Hottie was remodeling our bathroom in the basement so that the girls had a nice place to shower, clean up, etc.  BOTH ROOMS ARE DONE and we moved the sofa sleeper in yesterday!  It is never coming out of there!  (That’s my treadmill folded up – that’s going to be a pain in my ass, but it’s only 10 weeks!)

The cherry on this sundae, though, is the kids’ new play space in the basement!  We have had dreams of them having their own space if we could just get rid of our stuff.  Well, we got rid of a lot of crap and now they have their space where the sofa used to be!  It’s awesome!

So with all of my hard work (even Hottie credits me for this all being done), the kids have a new play space, their book nook is ready (yay!!!!!!  Another dream of ours!), the store room is only inhabited with things we REALLY want to keep, the garage has space for things that actually belong in a garage, we have a proper guest room which is also an awesome den for us when we don’t have guests (and I still have my treadmill in there – a requirement!), AND we’ve made almost $5,000 ($4,844 to be exact, but we’ll cross that $5,000 line easily with selling 18-24 month clothes, the breast pump, and some more furniture pieces).

I am so happy, I can hardly contain myself!

So what all did we get rid of?  Here is the LONG list (“tub” means a Rub.berma.de 14 gallon roug.hnec.k tote):

• 10 tubs worth of adult clothes, shoes, etc. taken to the Go.odw.ill (15 garbage bags)
• 7 tubs of free baby clothes to family, friends, etc.
• 1 tub of cloth diapers
• 1 tub of bottles
• 1 tub of toys
• 9 tubs of sold baby clothing (over 700 items!)
• 3 tubs of maternity clothes
• 2 tubs of craft stuff
• 1 tub of free Halloween decorations
• 3 tubs of Classic P.ooh stuff
• 1 tub of free gift bags
• 1 tub of Christmas cards
• 2 tubs of books
• 2 tubs of silver

So 44 tubs and then all of these things:

Hand breast pump
Boobytubes (2)
Medela shields, connectors, valves, and membranes
Lansinoh storage bags (125)
Pregnancy Wedge
JJB Messenger diaper bag
Monitor
Bottle sterilizer
Baby picture frames
Hamper
Baby Tub
Sippy cups
Pregnancy pillow
Nursing Cover
Bumpers
Carseat with 2 bases
Diaper Pail
Pail liners (2)
Planetwise wet bag
Kushies wet bags (6)
Bottle warmer
JuJuBe Be Prepared diaper bag
Petunia diaper bag
Pearhead frame
Hallmark recordable handprint heart
10 Sleep sacks
Aden and Anais swaddle blankets (15)
Moby Wrap
Bright Starts Portable Swing
Brica mirror
Itzbeen Timer
Bumbo
Aden and Anais Burpies
Vtech sing and discovery story piano
Red envelope frame set
JuJuBe Be All diaper bag
Graco sweet peace swing
Bouncy chair
Jumperoo
Boppy with liner
Boppy with liner 2
Bright Starts Running Table
Ergo sport with newborn insert
Pack and play

Pooh twin bedding set
Pooh bath towel set
Pooh switch cover
Pooh 4 picture frame
Pooh cupboard frame
Pooh wooden doll
Pooh piglet frame
Pooh swing frame
Pooh bookends
Mens 4 golf shirts
File Cabinet and Stuff
Animal ring holders
Wedding book pack
Spinning shower brush
Wine racks
Willow Tree Heart and Soul
Mens  running shirt
Mens running tights
Mens Flight Running shirt – Red
Mens Flight Running shirt – Teal
Mens Flight Running shirt – Black
Mens Flight Running shirt – Gray
Mens Flight Running shirt – Orange
Jim Shore Waterball
Second fondue set
Cupcake pan
Chevron skirt – 10
Black sweater skirt – L
Womens camo pants – L
Mens fitness stuff
Mens running shirt
Non-china china
Fitbit in box
Fitbit (used)
Grid shelves
Fondue set
Bread maker
Fryer
Chafing Dish
Wine appetizer wood plates
Pasta machine
Pie plates
Flash Blast Super Soaker
Weird Santa
Cake pans
Bead box 1 (premium beads with wire spool and headpins)
Bead box 2 (with glass animal and fish beads)
Bead box 3 (bigger beads)
Bead box 4 (tons of beads!)
Sterling stuff (3 chains, seed beads, jump rings, two clasps)
Pewter charms (charge at retail of $1.15 each then 60% of that)
Vintage R Rogers Silver Co 1883 Georgetown silverplate ice bucket with handles
Caterpillar frame
Glass firefly ornaments
New Baby Starter Kit
LS earrings
Silver blue/gray earrings
Gold Tone Jewelry
Queen bedding set
Silver onyx ring
Silver frog earrings
Silver ladies bracelet
Blue notecards and envelopes
Various small stamps

GIVEN AWAY FOR FREE:
Nickel bathroom set
1X nightgown
Wine box
Tree Topper
Bifold diapers
Similac
Mens pants
Juicer
Wine box and trivet
Party decorations
Ankle weights
Three hole punch
Car shades
Pom toppers
Eyelett setters
Scrapbook
Snowman photo album
Martini set
Striped album
Red album
Green jungle album
red cloth album
Half pans
Animal cards
Mens Running shorts
Cat food
Similac bottles
Cake deck
Baby Monitor
gold tone necklace
silver tone earrings

My house is clean!