Week 6 of our conquering clutter challenge was guest bedroom/office! If you are new to our challenge check out the following posts:
Week 5: Bathrooms and Utility Room
The final week has come upon us and it couldn’t have worked out better. Since it was Spring Break Elise and Luke went to Dustin’s parent’s house for the week leaving us with two kiddos! Dustin and I were able to put the twins to bed at 8:00 pm every night and were able to work on garage sale items a couple of hours for 3 nights. This was a huge help since the last garage sale we ended up pricing everything the night before. No fun!
All of the garage sale items were in the upstairs guest bedroom, so we couldn’t clean that room out until we actually had the garage sale. This room is pretty big and was jammed packed with stuff! On Friday Dustin’s parents and the kids came back. After the kids were in bed we were able to put the tables out in the garage and I laid everything out ready to go for the morning.
Since our last garage sale was 5 months ago we didn’t have as much stuff as we did the first time, but it’s pretty mind blowing that we were able to go through the house again with this challenge and pull out these items.
The morning started off pretty slow and then picked up. It was great weather for a garage sale too! It was cool in the morning, but then soon warmed up. Dustin’s parents were able to bring items from their house, which was great because their items made us have more options for buyers. I highly recommend getting others to bring and help with the garage sale. Dustin’s mom helped with the kids in the morning, while we were outside. After lunch, she and Dustin stayed outside for a couple of hours before we picked up. It’s really difficult to do a garage sale by yourself or even with just 2 people…depending if you have young kids. It’s also great to have other items from someone else because it diversifies your garage sale and makes it more appealing to so many more people come.
I think it was around 1:30-2:00 pm that we started picking up. All the extra clothes we had we bagged up and dropped it in a donation bin in town. All other items we boxed up and Dustin’s parents were able to donate to their church. I didn’t want anything coming back into the house. Elise was outside most of the morning and tried to sneak in a couple of things back into the house, so I let her pick one item and we put the rest back. We also tried to sell our old table and were unsuccessful so we brought that back in and I’m going to try to sale on Facebook. We made a little over $200 at the garage sale and I sold $70 of items on a Facebook resale page in the last 6 weeks.
I am so happy that we have come to the end of this challenge. I’m determined to change and improve many areas of my life in 2017 and this was definitely one of them! It was very challenging some weeks, but I have y’all to thank for keeping me motivated to complete this challenge.
Overall, the house has more space and feels cleaner, just because we don’t have all the stuff and toys everywhere. Elise and Luke will bring out a couple of items from their rooms on the weekend, but they put them back on Sunday night when we pick up the house before bed.
It’s also very important to remember when doing a challenge like this that you have to get rid of items while you are doing a purge. You can rearrange and “organize” your drawers, rooms, etc, but if you don’t actually remove items out of the house you will be in the same position in the next 6-12 months. With the 4 kids, we’ll always have clothes that they outgrow that I’ll need to keep bagging and donating, but I feel like we are more aware of what we will bring in the house in the future and that we’ll be more intentional with the items we purchase and bring into the house.
What about you? Is a decluttering challenge a little scary for you? If so, what is stopping you — motivation, support?
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