photo credit: usedtobelost

On August 1st I get the keys to my apartment. That gives me a couple of weeks to sort, purge, pack up the house. To add to the fun, my 18 year old daughter is moving into a townhouse near her college 90 minutes away, after spending last year in a furnished dorm, so she needs to get her things packed and moved too.

I’ve already sent dozens of boxes of books and household items as well as a dozen or so garbage bags filled with clothes, shoes, table & bed linens to a location donation centre yet I still seem to be over run with items that need to be dealt with.

I’m considering a yard sale but it’s giving me the shivers just thinking of it. My past experiences as a yard sale saleswoman haven’t been overly successful. Right now the idea of spending several hours (days?!?!) gathering items to sell, pricing them, dusting them, setting them up for display and then spending a day waiting around for people to come buy things and carry them off – *shudder*. I’ve just never made much money from it and all in all I find it a waste of time and energy.

Nothing against yard sales. I’ve got to many over the years and have found some great bargains. But as the seller it’s no picnic.

I’m considering doing an “online” yard sale of sorts instead. For the time it would take me to sort, dust, price and display items for a traditional yard sale, plus the time involved actually operating a yard sale all day or worse, all weekend – I could sort, price, photograph and write a short description of each item and post it for sale on Craigslist, Kijiji, or even local buy and sell groups.

On the other hand, a yard sale gets it over with on a specific date. Selling on Craigslist or Kijiji could drag this out for days or even weeks longer. With a yard sale I can say to myself – at 2pm if these items aren’t sold I will donate them to the local charity – and take them there immediately and be done with it.

Maybe I should just flip a coin?