yard sale – Shed 52

6 Week Round-Up and the 5 Priority Possessions We’ve Managed to Shed

September 21, 2017September 22, 2017 Shed52

We’re back and excited to share some return to success over here at Shed52. As dedicated readers will know, we were deep in the Shed52 struggle for the past few weeks, with no takers on our Stakmore Table Set and it turns out that you actually can say “no” to a muppet on a bicycle. We managed to continue to pare down our possessions in weeks 4 and 5 by giving away freebies and donating lots of clothes from our closets. But the point of Shed52 has been to sell our stuff and feature worthy charities to whom we can donate in the process. So, needless to say, these past few weeks have put a crimp in our style.

Fortunately, things have turned around for us in Week 6 and we’re psyched to report that we were able to sell an item that’s been taking up a lot of space at our place, getting minimal use, and serving as the site of the occasional teen-sibling fist fight. (I love our family, but let’s face it: teen siblings with mountain dew and Doritos in their systems are scarier than a Sharknado in a midnight rainstorm.)

Back to letting the cat out of the bag. A bean bag, to be exact. That’s right: we were able to sell a LoveSac gamer beanbag/memory foam chair that we received as a gift from a family member who was moving several years ago, back when I believed that you could never have too many kinds of chairs in one room. I couldn’t say “no” to a velvish fluff-ball on which I imagined many hours of book-reading would be spent. (I selectively forgot at the time that kids have smartphones now and books are just obsolete ipads in their eyes.) As you can imagine, this underused item has been a bit of a dark cloud in our house for the past few years. Literally.

Screen Shot 2017-09-21 at 8.03.25 AM.png — Exhibit B: Dark Cloud

We posted this bad boy on Facebook’s Marketplace a few weeks ago, where I imagined throngs of gamers in need of a new seating situation would eagerly be outbidding one another on our totally reasonable asking price of $175. (I know what you’re thinking– but these retail new for $350, without the velvish cover! And you don’t get what you don’t ask for.)

Unfortunately, it didn’t play out that way, and for two weeks, we were forced to resort to keeping our bike in the garage and the LoveSac in the living room. In the meantime, we did manage to continue in our decluttering quest, despite the many obstacles we were facing and the limited time we’ve had to dedicate thought to this process. It’s true: I have an uncanny knack for biting off way more than I can chew and perpetually wondering how it will all get done. So basically I chose the perfect time to start a blog.

Accurate representation of me pretty much every morning.

The good news? Our new good friend named James came through unexpectedly on Monday night and asked to pick up the LoveSac for $75. We were eager to be able to donate to the survivors of the hurricanes in Puerto Rico, where virtually the entire island is without power, so we took James up on his offer and met up the next day. He shared with us that the LoveSac was a gift for his 14 month old daughter, and of course our hearts melted, and before I knew what I was doing, we were telling him to just take it for $60. I drive a hard bargain, I know.

And since that papa’s got a brand new bag, we feel like a total weight has been lifted in this joint. It’s also given us some time to reflect on this journey so far, which is perfect timing, since today is Rosh Hashanah, or the Jewish New Year. We’re looking back and feeling lots of gratitude for the privileges we enjoy every day, and also looking ahead to living more intentionally and more justly. This also coincides perfectly with our plan to give readers a recap of everything we’ve sold/donated in the past 6 weeks:

6 Week Recap

Item: IKEA Kallax Bookcase Sold: $35 Donation: Southern Poverty Law Center
Cherry Oak Bar Sold: $200 Donation: Houston Food Bank
Malm Dresser (Boss’s) Sold: $80 Donation: Jimmy Fund
Nifty Doodad Given Away Donation: Nothing. We’re the Worst
Bags of Clothes Given Away Donation: Goodwill
LoveSac Sold: $60 Donation: Unicef for Puerto Rico

We’re hoping that our practice of donating about 25%-50% of our proceeds from these sales will inspire others to give what they can to worthy causes in a time of great instability in our world.

We’re also excited to announce our next item up for grabs on the blog, along with an organization very near and dear to our hearts and a totally epic announcement about an encounter with a total hero next week. But we don’t want to give anything away…

Check back later this week to learn all about it. In the meantime, tell us about the dark cloud of your decluttering journey. Is it a giant beanbag? ~~Trash bags~~ classy plastic containers full of gently used clothes? What GIF best represents your Shed52 Struggle?

Week 5 Recap: When Life Needs to Take a Long Walk Off a Short Pier

September 10, 2017September 10, 2017 Shed52

It’s another Sunday here at Shed52 and we can’t believe all that the universe can manage to pack into one family’s life in just 7 days. We’ve been eager to return to this amazing little community here at WordPress since Wednesday, but each day has brought a new challenge and rendered us pretty useless in the blogosphere, and mostly just trying to survive. To give you a sense of what we mean, here’s a rundown. Because who doesn’t love a good Sunday morning list?

There’s this tiny little storm moving through the great state of Florida and both Jason’s mom and my parents live just north of Fort Lauderdale. They also all live in waterfront homes. Jason’s mom is on oxygen, so we were able to persuade her to get out fast and come be with us on Wednesday. Unfortunately, this cost us about $800 for a last minute flight. More unfortunate was that my folks decided to stay, and are currently hunkered down in their tiny space awaiting the worst.
This satellite photo accurately captures the scale of this storm, which they say is nearly the size of Jason’s book collection.
The federal government officially announced plans to rescind DACA, which means that Jason, an immigration attorney, has been inundated with calls and visits from deeply worried clients who are in fear for their status and their families. We understand this as a human rights issue more than a political one, and it’s heartbreaking at the end of a week to know how many folks are suffering right now.
The federal government also made vague, worrying and misleading comments about Title IX, the federal civil rights law that protects people on the basis of their sex and gender in educational institutions. This greatly affects my work as a sexual trauma counselor and advocate at a nearby university and needless to say, I’m fired up about continuing to effectively and appropriately respond to survivors of violence in my community. This is difficult to balance with my concurrent desire to just hide under a blanket with a bucket of pumpkin mac ‘n’ cheese, because it’s September and I’m a New Englander.
I continue to have no idea what I’m doing in the one PhD class I was stupid enough to register for this semester (what’s a Piaget, anyway?) and would rather bake cakes all weekend than read books, so that’s what I’ve been doing to cope.
Peach upside down cake, baked with brown sugar & bourbon caramel. I call it “Procrastinator’s Delight.”

Jason’s car ~~exploded~~ bit the dust on the highway this week and we learned it’s worth nothing and we’ll get roughly zero dollars for it. He got about 165K miles out of it, but we were disheartened to learn that you can, in fact, kill a Subaru. He just got a great deal on a preowned Prius yesterday (yay!) but we’re reeling from sticker shock of this week, and the cumulative effect of all these other matters.

World’s most expensive trash can, according to Jason.

We were worried that this would mean we would fail to continue to empty out our house of useless stuff, like the two kids’ bikes I hoped to sell for $29 a piece. We have’t been able to pursue the sales as persistently as we’d like, and so nothing’s sold as of yet!

On second thought, it would have been pretty great to see Jason use this to get around instead.

However, Jason was quick to point out that, with the loss of his car likewise means the loss of all of the utter junk that was piled up in it. I frequently refer to Jason’s car as a “trash can on wheels” because it’s accumulated nearly 10 years of kids’ bubblegum wrappers, crumbs, loose change, and of course, random scraps of paper (yes, I try to clean it out frequently, but anyone with kids will know what I mean). This isn’t to mention the formidable stench of a teenage boy’s hockey equipment, which is enough to chase you out of the car and into a sewer during peak season.

So while I’m not feeling like we’re “winning” at Shed52 these past few weeks, I have to give credence to all the obstacles we’ve been facing as a family and also give credit to the fact that we’re not giving up. This blog has definitely helped us remain accountable to ourselves in this quest to give up “stuff” and I have a renewed sense of commitment to shedding at least one item this afternoon. One stop I know I can make is to our local Goodwill with a bag of clothes to be sent to survivors of these recent Hurricanes. Right after I start this homework.

Check back tomorrow for a very special post from Jason! He’ll be sharing what Shed52 has meant to him, and reflecting on the true weight of stuff in our lives. We’ve also been procrastinating dealing with the issue directly in front of us with other writing projects, such as this piece I just published over at Medium about what Harry Potter can teach us about white supremacy. If you’re like us and in need of a little break this weekend, feel free to check it out, comment and share!

Screen Shot 2017-09-10 at 10.24.54 AM.png — “What White People Can Learn from harry Potter About White Supremacy” on *Medium,* September 10, 2017

How are you all doing with the recent happenings in the U.S. and around the world? Are you or your loved ones in the path of Hurricane Irma? How have you been coping? What’s sorts of things do you use to stay hopeful and on track with your goals when the going gets tough? We’d love to hear from you below!

Why Shed52?

August 9, 2017August 21, 2017 Shed52

Many of you have been writing to us with questions about what inspired us to try a project like this, and why we’re making such a process of it rather than just holding a yard sale, donating everything, or getting a dumpster.

Well, wonder no more! We’re here to answer your questions.

The truth is, Jason gets all the credit on this one (including the name; he asked me to make sure I said that). Jason determined that, as our track record clearly demonstrates, we can’t be relied upon to purge ourselves of our least prized possessions in one fell swoop. If we could, we would have! But, we can’t! And so we haven’t.

As a self-admitted procrastinator, Jason tends to joke that he’s “allergic to the future.” This often means that I’m doing the planning in this outfit. Don’t get me wrong: Jason is just as necessary to this team as I am, especially since I get so overwhelmed with all the planning I do that I am often paralyzed by it. Jason keeps me present and grounded when it looks like I’m spiraling into an emotional apocalypse about what we’re going to make for dinner, or whether I’ll ever see Iceland.

What’s the point here? We’re essentially saying that, yes, we’ve tried to have a yard sale. In fact, we’ve talked about it approximately twice a year for the past 5 years. Usually when one of us has climbed out of an avalanche of mystery boxes in the basement or barely survived the annual spring tradition of tripping over one of the garage’s 11 precariously stored snow shovels, we find ourselves inspired.

“That’s it. We’re having a yard sale this (insert month/season/fortnight)!”

“Yeah!” We all chime.

giphy (1) 2.gif — actual footage from our last attempt to “clean out the garage.”

Our determination wanes pretty quickly from there. Jason usually forgets he ever said it within a half hour, and I, anxiously perseverating on this commitment we’ve made, can typically be found in the fetal position scouring Pinterest for consoling responses to “yard sale fail” searches. It wouldn’t have been worth it to even bother, I tell myself.

This year, we’ve reached a tipping point. Stacks of stuff we’ve inherited from loved ones, or stored for friends we never saw again, or bought (because we couldn’t afford not to!) or found curbside during Allston Christmas, have begun overcrowding our space.

all chr.jpg — Allston Christmas (aka Boston’s Moving Day). You’re not officially a Bostonian until you’ve almost died in UHaul on September 1st.

With all of that said, we realized that it’s better to make a year-long process of thoughtfully letting go of things we thought we’d treasure. We’re taking it one step at a time and setting measurable, realistic and achievable weekly goals. This means Jason can’t procrastinate too much, and I have limited time to perseverate.

This is supposed to amount to a win-win. We’ll see. We hope you will too!

What’s the one thing about home organization that you find yourself procrastinating or panicking about most? Are there projects that you’ve comically avoided, like we have? Let us know in the comments below!