First, a report on my garage sale. This was a once and only experience. After shlepping stuff to my friend’s house for three days, we sat outside in the lovely weather on Saturday for five hours luring customers with signs and hand signals. I netted $100. Not much for the effort involved, never mind having to cart all the remains back to my house and schedule a donation pickup. Nonetheless, this event encouraged me to clean out all the souvenirs, athletic and craft supplies, board games, and tchotchkes that I’d been keeping because "I might sell them someday." Well, guess what? Someday arrived, and no one wanted them. I can do better with a tax deduction. So with great sadness, I’ll be donating an L.L.Bean sleeping bag, paperweights, crayons, cards and games, overnight bags, exercise mat, costume jewelry, and more. All that money spent....how wasteful through the years.

Ditto for books. I still can’t part with most of my collection. My cookbooks take up three shelves in my kitchen. We’re thinking of putting the albums on our built-in family room shelves into cabinets and removing the cookbooks there. Always rearranging, sorting out, cleaning, giving away...it all ends some day, but we need to conserve now, given the bad economy.

With the clutter patrol off my mind, I’ve resumed writing and have done 19 pages this week so far. I’m projecting five weeks to go to the finish line. Revisions are easier, in that the creative work is done, but harder because of the intense concentration needed to ensure continuity. I’m eager to get there and yet I’ll be sad when the story is done.

Now, see, if I stopped by your yard sale, I would have been all over the costume jewelry. Since I design jewelry and use lots of vintage stuff I would have bought it all:) But I know how you feel, I did a yard sale once...like you, it was a one time endeavor. Good thing is, know you know:)

Some of my daughter's bracelets sold, but for fifty cents or so each item. It makes me sick to think how much money I've spent on that stuff over the years. She still likes to buy more, but I'm not paying. It comes out of her pocket now.
And why did we buy so many souvenir paperweights? Oy. The stuff we save....

My daughter and I are having a yard sale this summer. I have so much junk..stuff I bought, don't know why. My husband says 'don't sell that!' But I say 'why not..I don't really need it and when I am dead and gone, chances are the kids won't want it anyway.' I remember going to auctions of the deceased and seeing all the bits of their lives on a cart and thinking how sad....none of their kids want it so it goes out somewhere...I can't sell or part with my books though.

It makes you feel good to get money for these things. And if they don't sell, you can keep them or donate them for a tax deduction. Having a yard sale is great incentive for spring cleaning.

BTW, I read Murder by Manicure and I loved it. I have one more to read..hehe..and that is the first one! I really have read these out of order! But after reading most all of thise series, I like the idea you can pick up any book in the series and get the jist of who Marla is, her past, what haunts her, and everything else. You do it in a concise way so that you aren't asking 'who? what? huh?'