Garage sale update! It's the loaves and fishes again!

I remember yesterday morning walking out to my front yard with an armful of household junk praying for God to bless our "stuff" and make someone want it!

Well, just like the loaves and fishes he took what we had and multiplied it for his glory.

I wish I had a photo. Honestly - I was too busy. Unlike typical garage sales people can from 6 am (yeah - so much for not before 7!) and kept coming till after lunch.

Really - what we had to sell was nothing too significant. Kids clothes, some very old prams, books and kitchen stuff. Just things. A friend and her 5 year old came and added some helping hands and some beautiful clothes to the party.

By the end of the day - we had made over $600 - and every single cent is going to the floods. We only had one cynic all day ... almost everyone was overly generous and many gave us extra!

I had put out into facebook land a request for someone with a ute to come and help us cart away the "leftovers"

I was blessed with more than that. I discovered news of another garage sale happening on the Sunday - again with all funds to go to the flood appeal! A quick chat later, and he turned up with a flat bed truck and took every item we had left to give it a chance of selling again! So NO clean up! What a blessing!

I am very tired. I even had a nap. How lucky am I to have somewhere clean to nap and rest ... my prayers are with all those suffering and every volunteer knee deep in mud.

Our local council has a call out for blankets and sheets so I am off now to get a load to drop down this morning.

A friend who is a rural firie (God bless them!) is in Goodna cleaning up. He wants cleaning supplies. Gloves, bleach, tissues, discinfect etc. We are blessed in our town to have everything we need so I think this is my next step - working out how we can do a fast collection and get it down to him.

You can ALL do SOMETHING! I promise!

Aussies don't stand by the sidelines. We are there in the trenches with our mates!

Helping Qld floods in our own little way ...

Truly - my home is not really this messy.

At lunch time today we decided we had to help the flood appeal anyway we can.
By 12.30 we had decided to have a garage sale ... all profits to the Qld Flood appeal. And by all profits I mean every single cent.

By 1pm I had the weather forecast and all looked fine to go ...

By 1.30 a I had told a friend and she and her 5 year old had decided to join forces with us.

By 2pm we had a float and an add in the paper.

By 3pm we had started to source the masses of stuff we could sell (much of which has been waiting in our shed for several months waiting for a free sunny day when I wasn't working to have a sale!)

By 4pm we had a mess. But a workable one.

By 5pm we had completed a letter box drop advertising our sale to the neighbours

By 6pm we had signage all ready to go.

By 7pm I had a ute ready to take whatever is left to charity shops for them to sell on when our sale is finished

My five year old is excited. THIS is something she CAN do.

Who knows if we will make much? But every cent counts. And we are raising awareness and the ability for EVERYONE to do something.

Make a donation. You can even do it from overseas my friends or interstate.

If you live locally go and help. If you can't clean up - how about donating food for the workers? My friend Adrian who is working in mud thigh deep in Brisbane worked till 2pm before food was found.

Think about sourcing school supplies for students in flood hit suburbs.

Go find someone hit by floods and ask them if you can do their laundry.

We can ALL make a difference. They say this flood will take over two years to recover from.

I don't know who "they" is - but they have never met a Queenslander.

All around the state real Qld men and women are in there helping out already. My husband went to volunteer and wherever he went he found out the neighbours had already been in and got a lot of the jobs done.

The oldies at work told me they thought this spirit of mateship and "can do" had been bred out of our young people by selfishness, materialism and computer games.

And they are so happy to be proved wrong!

It so better be sunny on Saturday ...

It's election day ... but more importantly for us ... YARD SALE DAY!

I have spent all day with my husband in the shed. It is gross. I don't have pics because it was too gross to even think about remembering my camera.

And it reminded me of something I had forgotten ... men don't like women throwing things from in their shed!

But Saturday is garage sale day. All proceeds are going towards my new bathroom to be ...

It better not be raining.

Today .... the spare room closet

This is the closet we use to store the clothes Eliana has grown out of, and a lot of our baby stuff *just in case*.

Oh - and jackets and formal dresses - stuff we don't use every day.

I don't have a before picture. If I told you that I pray a little before I open the door to put something else in would you understand?? Or that you open the door, throw it in fast and then close the door as quick as you can???

(tell me - don't we all have a closet like that? OK - some of you don't - but I did. (did - don't now!) :)

So - this is the after.




And this is a bed full of stuff ready to go to the garage to wait for our yard sale.

Miss E's bedroom - the shelf unit

Miss E's bedroom needs some serious decluttering.

She is past the toddler stage ... and moving onto big girl toys (my girl starts prep soon!) so we really need to re-evaluate what we are keeping.

Plus we have a stack of baby things hidden in her wardrobe, and with no sibling so far we only want to keep the bare minimum just in case.

Step one was this expedit unit (from ikea - we love this unit by the way - have used it in so many rooms in so many ways!)

Before (top of unit)



Before



After



I love how by turning it sideways she now has a home for her gorgeous dollhouses. The dolls you see to the right now live in one of the pink boxes so they are no longer there. Her school bags will have a home in one of the boxes.

So far so good. I'm much happier!
And one garbage bag of toys/clothes/baby stuff to sell, and one in the bin!

To garage sale or not to garage sale?

That is the question right there.

Initially I was all for donating everything.

But as my decluttering gets more and more focussed, and we are getting rid of stuff that would sell ... I am starting to think we should have the dreaded garage sale.

I don't want to. I want it all GONE.

But I have weekends free coming up.
And I want to turn the garage into a fabulous office/sewing room/playroom.
And I could use the money from the sale to pay for what I want.

I just hate the idea of the mess hanging around.

Maybe if I make a deadline date - say January 31st. If it's not gone then it all gets donated?

Opinions please?