I would be totally remiss...

I would be totally remiss if I didn't write a separate blog post to thank Lindsey for her amazing help for 2 weeks. She is the 'minimalist' in the family, so when I learned that she'd be coming to stay with us, I pleaded with her (OK, maybe that's a bit of an exaggeration!) to help me with de-junking the house in anticipation of us putting it on the market.

She was more than willing to help. I think this could be a future career for her if she wanted to! She would go from room to room boxing things up and taking them outside in preparation for the mother of all yard sales.

I posted this comment on facebook on September 17th: "Day 1 of Lindsey dejunking and me painting is coming to a close. Good progress, very good progress! I feel a little bit like those people on the hoarding shows...we'll know I'm in need of a full blown intervention if I'm caught in the middle of the night with my headlight on going through the boxes out back set aside for the yard sale/thrift store to 'rescue' my precious possessions! lol"

I tried really hard to work on my home improvement projects and stay out of the room she was working in so I wouldn't see what was being taken outside. Of course when all was said and done and we were setting up and holding the yard sale Darvin and I both 'saved' some of our possessions from being sold...but I think I still did pretty well. We should have taken pictures of the masses of 'goods' for sale.

Aside from my mom's oriental rug that we ultimately sold because of the yard sale for a meager $300, we made about $2,200 on 2 days of yard sale and LOTS of years of buying and days of dejunking and boxing and then setting up! In fact, there was so much left over that I recruited the Smith's to run a 2nd yard sale with us splitting the proceeds. They are free to bring anything of theirs that they want and will collect 100% profit on it. They'll be holding the yard sale this next weekend.

I'm still trying to sell one of my couches. It is in superb condition, but unfortunately the style (flowering) is not appealing to many people. I hope to have Evan help me take it outside to the yard sale this time so it is displayed. Maybe if we lower the price to $100 someone will be interested. I have an awesome Schwinn stationery recumbent bike for sale too.

I've also been trying to sell snow tires and new cloth diapers for Briana and Ivan without success. I need to go write down the tire size and get a separate advertisement on Craigslist for them.

I'm making progress on the home improvement/maintenance projects, slowly but surely. I just feel like time is running out. I really wanted to get the house on the market before we left for our cruise here in a couple of weeks, but just don't think I'm going to make it!

While Lindsey was here she commented a couple of times that she wished she could do more, but had to tend to baby Brooklyn. I think she was full of baloney, I have proof that we had a built in babysitter (just kidding):

Abby, loves her babies when they come to visit! She loves snuggling with them and hovering to make sure everything's OK. And in all honesty, despite having to split time between de-junking and taking care of baby Brooky, Lindsey did a huge amount of work for which I will forever be grateful!

While they were here we did make some time to go visit Great Grandpa Clement:

This little girl is a baby Houdini, she can get out of her swaddle in 60 seconds flat...Tu-Dah!

It was so good to have Lindsey and Brooklyn here for a couple of weeks. We'll miss them tremendously when we move to Texas!