Cleaning House

Well, not really cleaning house in the normal sense of the phrase, but who am I to say something normal, anyway?

Food for thought.

I've had grand ideas over the past few days. See, that's a problem I have. I have tons of grand ideas, just not enough time and/or money to execute said ideas. However, the grand ideas I've been coming up with lately have had to do with making money. As in, taking stuff I no longer need, want, or have a place for, and turning them into cash.

Viola. You didn't know I was a magician on the side, did you? I sure wish it was that easy.

So, today I went through my closet. Yuck. There are a lot of clothes in there. See, I have regular clothes in the rotation hanging up. Stuff I wear all the time, or at least, fairly regularly. There's still too much hanging up, but I'm working on it. Today I cleaned out what was in the bottom of my closet. There's a bag of out-of-season stuff, and that pretty much gets left alone. I'll never know what I want to wear next January now, will I? That's just wrong. So, that bag gets left alone. However, there's the ever discouraging bag of "I'll fit into those someday"s and the bag of "I don't like those so I'm gonna sew them into something else." I took the bag of can't currently wears and went through that. It's bad, because there are a lot of cute things in there....that would fit someone else. Darn it. I finally managed to happily (I guess) let them go. I now have a stack of 14...yes, yes....FOURTEEN skirts to get rid of. Mind you, I've never worn at least half of those. There are also a couple shirts, a few blazers, and a couple vests that I don't wear anymore and I set those out as well. I do, however, have a fundamental problem taking all this stuff to the thrift store. See, I do that a LOT. I buy a skirt at the thrift store, and then come home and get one I don't wear much or don't like, and take it to the thrift store. Or, at least, that's how it's supposed to work. Don't ask how my closet got to be so full...

But see, that situation leaves me $3 in the hole every time. Sure, $3 isn't much for a skirt (if you weren't used to the $0.25 a skirt thrift store, anyway) but it adds up. And then you have to have a $3 shirt to go with that skirt you just bought as well. So, here's my grand idea in that department. I'm going to try desperately to sell skirts and other articles of cast-off clothing on Ebay or something like that. Couldn't hurt, and I might at least get my money back.

Besides, I'd like to make a little extra money these days to add to my piggy bank. You never know when you might need, say, a fancy dress or something. Just a thought.

So today I started by putting up my one remaining Civil War day dress on Ebay. I put it pretty cheap, because it's a few years old and it wasn't that expensive (as far as those dresses go) to begin with.

It sold. Like, just now. ChaChing.

I also listed my mandolin on a couple websites. It would be nice to sell it....it would result in a much larger ChaChing, and I'd like to be rid of it. I never learned how to play it much, and I don't care about playing it enough to learn. I'm taking a serious loss on it, but the tuning guts will have to be replaced, so it's all good. I'd love to sell it.

Let's see....over the years, I've been the lucky recipient of lots of yarn. Someone's grandma dies and guess who gets her yarn? I'm not complaining, but I have more cheap yarn than I'll ever want (can someone tell me why grandmas who die never knit with alpaca? I'd love to know...) so I'm going to tackle dividing that up and getting rid of it soon. If I can get past the wasp's nests in the barn, where it's currently stored. Y'all can't have my nice yarn, though, so don't even think about that. :) Not until I get a lot more desperate, anyway...haha!

So, that's how I'm cleaning house. Basically just taking stuff I don't need and coercing other poor souls into being burdened by the stuff. I mean, blessing other, less fortunate souls with my overabundance. That's better.

In other news, I bought a dress at the thrift store Saturday. I spent $5 on one thing...a first, I think. I NEVER find full dresses that I like, but I LOVE this one. It's denim, and I would get a picture of it, but it's dirty. Someone (no names, but her initials are Kayla, as Jacob says) was so excited about her new dress, that she wore it to her DBF's house that night to play volleyball. And her DBF's dear brother (bless his heart, he was so embarrassed) sorta tackled her. The ball was on my side, E. ;) And she ended up on her backside in the dust and dirt. :) It was a really fun night, and I played volleyball for about 4 hours straight. I'm sore. But I'm getting better! I've come a long way since this: (gotta love the uncomfortable "I have to tug at my shirt because I think everyone's looking at me and I'm really uncomfortable being here right now and I can't just stand here still. How the heck do you play volleyball again? Oh my gosh..there's a BALL...what do I DO???? I don't play sports! HELP! WHY was a nice to this guy?") Just kidding about the last part...I'm very glad I was nice to this amazing guy. He pushes me to do things I'm uncomfortable with sometimes and I'm better for it. He's the greatest thing since...like, EVER.

 This picture was taken the very first time we went to Jacob's family's for a get-together. He'd invited me, and everyone made fun of him for it, because he invited this girl. That was exactly 8 months ago from Saturday when I was over there playing volleyball. Not only was the volleyball a lot better (I did actually hit the ball a few times, successfully, sometimes,) but everyone treats me like I'm one of the family now, I'm comfortable there, and it's great. I love every minute of it!

I reckon that'll be it for now. I'm not sure anything I just wrote had a point, but, oh, well.