Wholly Crap!

This Saturday I held my first yard sale. The third floor of our house is unfinished. Since we moved in ten years ago, anything that can't find a place in the house gets put in the attic. A few years ago, I hired "The Garbageman" to come and help haul out the junk from the upstairs. It felt great. But then we just turned around and filled it with even more junk. It started to feel like I had all this crap hanging over my head, literally and figuratively, so I decided to deal with the attic once and for all. I read a great article about how to have a successful yard sale in the Saturday Evening Post (who knew this magazine was still in existence) while waiting in the doctor's office. I followed the main points of their plan:

1. Give each family member 3-4 boxes that they could fill with items to keep
2. All items leftover are tossed, sold, or donated
3. Hold your yard sale on the 15th or 30th of the month (around payday)

I was inspired. Labor Day weekend, I got up and headed to Target to buy 15-20 plastic bins. My husband and I spent the entire weekend hauling out and organizing the attic. My son and I handled the toys and athletic equipment. All and all, we put 20 full bags of trash out on the curb, with 3 dead televisions and a alarmingly large amount of styrofoam to be dealt with separately. I spent the next week cleaning and tagging all the items. Then, got some great ideas for advertising and sale day logistics from Yardsalequeen.com. The sale was set for Saturday, September 18, 9-2.

Yesterday was D-day. I added balloons to the signs by 6:30am and we started carrying everything out around 7am. By 8:20, I had just about everything out, organized by category and up on boxes or tables, as suggested by the Yard Sale Queen. The early birds started arriving around 8:15 and I made my first sale by 8:45: our first coffee table I bought at an outlet store for $99, which I thought was a real steal at the time. I sold it for $20. Other salewares included:

• a box of shoes at $2/pair
• the Jack Lalaine juicer used once at $10 (sold for $5 at 2:45p)
• endless toys
• lamps and tables
• various small tables
• prints and posters
• glass vases
• golf clubs and tennis rackets

and so much more.

At the sale's end, my neighbor came by and had the brilliant idea of hauling what didn't sell to the end of the driveway so it could get picked at and I'd had less to bag up up Sunday for trash day on Monday. (My town allows each household one garbage can of trash and anything else must be in special bags the town cells at $10/5 bags!)

Later that night, I headed over to Target to pick up laundry detergent. I usually enjoy a stroll through Target, but the idea of buying and bringing in another piece of stuff into my house made me physically sick. What it took to clean out 10 years of clutter was several hours of serious sweat, and at the end of the day, I had $232 to show for it. I've put the money into my SmartyPig savings account and setup recurring payments into the account to grow it. I haven't decided what we're going to do with the money once I've hit my savings goal, but I know it won't be towards buying a meaningless piece of nothing; and that's sure worth something!

Occam's Razor

I heard the most fascinating story on "This American Life" this afternoon. It was based on Occam's Razor which, boiled down to its essence, asserts that: Given a choice between two explanations, the simplest explanation is probably the right explanation.

The story was about a family who spent at least twenty years asserting that their first born son, was white, when in actuality, he was biracial. It was one of those classic NPR stories that is so compelling, I take the long way home and inevitably have to sit in the car to listen to the end. I was absolutely unable to comprehend so many different pieces of the story. How could this family live with such a big elephant in the room and never address it? Why, once the story got out, no one was angry, bitter, or betrayed? In fact, once the truth was out, the family felt relief. The son felt complete, both fathers felt equally a father to their son, the sisters could finally relax, and the mother was free. WTF???!!!

At so many different points throughout this family's life, when faced with an opportunity to face this unspoken truth, each family member, chose to go with the easier and simpler option. They did it because it was easier than facing the possibility of losing their center, their world, the idea of their perfect circle of love. But, it still didn't seem plausible to me. This kind of blindness is just not possible.

Then I thought about where I am in my personal journey. I've always seen myself as a creative person. I play an instrument, sew, knit, and pretty much enjoy any type of crafty venture. It's that second to last word that is my Occam's Razor solution. Given the choice between thinking of myself as crafty versus an artist, the simpler is explanation. I can answer yes to crafting, but an artist, no friggin' way. Artists create things. Artists have vision. Artists can see what is unseen and then express it through a given medium.

But, oh God, do I want to be an artist. Just typing these words made my stomach flip flop. I want to be an artist. And it seems to me, that to make that happen, I have to abandon the idea of my perfect circle of self. And I realize that, like the family, it's the insistence of keeping the idea of my perfect circle of self, what's holding me back from being in the center of my freer, truer (not perfect) circle.

I have been encouraged by a mentor to start an Artists' Way circle. My first instinct was excitement, then came that naysayer voice who says I am no artist and no one will join and now is not the time, and besides, a lot of the readers on Amazon said it's corny and they're probably right.

So I have to ask myself: Given a choice between two explanations, is the simpler explanation the easier one or the safe one?

Words to live by...