It seems like a cliche, doesn’t it?  “We’re moving, so we’re having a yard sale.”  Or tag sale, or garage sale, or estate sale – whatever you want to call it, you’re simply unloading your neglected crap on somebody else.  But you know what they say about one man’s trash being another man’s treasure.  Even I have been known to delight at a yard sale bargain more than once.

I used to hold a yard sale just about every August, when it didn’t make any sense whatsoever to have an outdoor event in the San Fernando Valley, much less on the west side of the house where the sun beats down relentlessly for a majority of the day.  Still, somehow that seemed to be the time of year during which I was most active in the de-cluttering department, so I’d haul the boxes and bags out into the driveway, plaster the neighborhood with Day-Glo pink signs, and strap on my fanny pack full of change.

Yes, I still have a fanny pack.  I keep it for exactly that purpose.

Over the last week, as planned, I have gone through my house and de-cluttered.  This was the grandmama of all decluttering projects, the effort that I’ve been dying to undertake for at least a year.  I went through every drawer, shelf, cubby, and cabinet.  I even cleaned out the junk drawer ((shudder)).  As I went along, I made a pile for the yard sale, a pile for garbage, and boxes of things that I didn’t want to get rid of but could live in storage for a few months while we show our house to prospective buyers.

The pile for the yard sale is the size of a car.  I’m having the yard sale tomorrow.  With any luck, by the end of the day we’ll actually be able to fit a real car in the garage.