Killing Birds With One Stone - Spring Cleaning Party

Attic Gal Alysa says:

My garage has been a mess for months. I have been planning to have a garage sale since January but with no weekends open until March, it wasn't happening. Instead, my garage was quickly becoming a hazard zone. There was a small path that led from the front of the garage door to the door to the house. It was embarrssing to open my garage door for the world to see and I worried about someone getting hurt while trying to get from point A to point B.

I scheduled a weekend to have our garage sale and clean the garage at the same time. This happened last weeked. If you are like me, I like to accomplish a lot of different projects at the same time. Let's see all the "birds" I "killed" with my one "stone."

The sale started on Friday - a slower day for most garage sales so I knew the garage could get cleaned out a bit more plus most of my children would be in school so I could accomplish more. It turned out to be the most fun day as a bunch of friends stopped. Impromptu party! (Bird #1)

My dear friends Helene (seated with baby) and Anna helped me clean out the garage while the garage sale was going on. (Bird #2) When cleaning, if you can, involve a good friend who will be open and honest with you about what to keep and what not to keep. Since we don't have a basement, the garage houses a lot. Should I keep these bolts of fabric? Should I keep all these stamps the children hardly ever use? What about these family heirlooms? What about clothes the children will grow into? etc. It's nice to have other brains and perspectives. I cleared out a lot and we kept adding it to the sale.

Okay, these are some obvious "birds," here are some other ones:

Made roughly $500 from all the goodies (Bird #3)
Sent all the leftovers to charity (Bird #4)
The children played and played outside with neighborhood friends ALL day on Saturday.
(Bird #5)
Chatted and built relationships with neighbors that stopped by for a visit. (Bird #6)
Painted a bird (see earlier post). (Bird #7)
Ended up with a clean garage (Bird #8)

After filling two recycling bins (the big ones), two garbage cans (again, the big ones), and working until 10:30 p.m. Saturday night, I have a completely clean garage. OOoh - it feels so good. I'm not an embarrasment to the neighborhood anymore. I have the epoxy flooring so I washed down the floor with a hose and cleaner. I think I can eat off of it now.

Do you have artwork that you want to keep but just don't know where it will go in your house? Why not the garage? We spend time in there. Why can't we enjoy a bit of pretty there? Plus, the Paul Frank monkey just makes me smile. Julius is so cute!
I love baskets, trays, and containers. I'm in constant need of them as I cart items to and from school, church, or someone's house. Rather than hanging clothes in the garage, I decided to use this space to place random "carrying" objects. I may not be nice and neat but it is easily accessed.

I enjoy doing Ebay when I have an hour here or there. I grouped items I could sell in an hours time within these plastic boxes and numbered them. So when I have an hour, I pull the #1 box and work on it until it is done and then another time pull out the #2, etc.

Boy, I'm looking happy to have a garage sale :) Check behind me and you get an idea how bad the workbench looked before as well as up above. Ugh.

Work bench is finally clean!

Bats, hockey sticks, lacrosse sticks, etc are all housed in a big basket. Lots of portable tables are housed next to a bookshelf that holds craft supplies for children.

The best part - my Goob Mobile is parked in the garage before it turns 120 degrees. Yeah!