Clean House

We had our first garage sale this weekend. We didn't have much - we've only been married 11 months after all, but we had stuff, and my mom brought up the stuff she's accumulated. We had some old furniture from our previous lives in the baement, frames and photo albums and unburned candles and stuff. Have I mentioned before that I detest clutter? Piles and knick-knacks and purposeless decor make my skin crawl.

I was raised by a purger. My mom doesn't get emotionally attached to stuff - she attaches herself to photos and memories and tall glasses of iced tea on the front porch. She doesn't buy things unless she knows exactly how it will be used, and she doesn't keep things after their use is over unless there's a very good reason. I inherited the purging - and the selective buying.

B was raised by a saver. There's an emotion and memory attached to everything. B inherited the saving. But slowly and surely, he's come to detest stuff, too. Well, maybe not surely - he did pull a golf club he hasn't used in at least ten years out of our garage sale because it's "vintage". Whatever, baby steps.

So here's how we prepped for the Garage Sale:

1) In November during my two weeks of laid-off-dom, I was watching Oprah and Peter Walsh suggested a black bag routine. You go through your house with huge black trash bags every couple months and toss everything you don't use in the bags. You stash them in the basement for 6 months - and if you haven't gone back to the bags, you get rid of the stuff. I black bagged my items - clothes, CDs, everything - and they all went into our garage sale this weekend.

2) B and I both headed to the basement and decided what we use - the awful oak chairs that used to match our dining room table actually get pulled out when we have more than 10 guests (frequent with our big families), but the plywood corner desk? The XL mattress from fraternity days? I don't want to think about it. So we labeled that stuff for sale.

3) Then it was time to tackle the main floor - where we've really kept things minimal anyway. Everything that B wanted to keep (because I would have sold everything) needed to have a compelling reason for keeping it. Unburned candlesticks with no candlestick holders to burn them in? Yeah, garage sale.

4) We woke up early - as we were putting things out 1:15 minutes before the sale was supposed to start, we had people sorting through our laundry baskets of crap stuff.

5) We I bargained on everything - Mr. B got a bit spicy with a woman who wanted a $5 item for $3, so we fed him a donut and told him to simmer.

And in the end, we had a nice pile of cash to add to our house envelope for things we actually need down the line, one laundry basket of vintage Coach and Dooney Bourke handbags to Ebay for my mom, and a clutter free house.

What's your house style? Are you a thing lover like Mr. B? Or an emotionless wall like stone cold me? Do you keep things for a potential future use, or do you figure if you need it down the road, you can always buy another (we need to keep this economy afloat somehow, right?). Sound off!