Community Yard Sale

This past weekend, we decided to take part in a community yard sale.  It is one we have driven past often as they do it a few weekends a year and yet never considered giving it a shot.  But with our new debt-busting mentality, it just seemed right when we saw the advertisements.

Since I am a pretty extreme minimalist, I constantly go through our belongings and purge things that we haven't used for a while, but I usually pack it up and donate it.  This time we went through every closet and cabinet and tagged it for the yard sale.  The idea of making money off of things we barely use made decisions much easier.  Even if something only got us a dollar, it was still better than nothing, so off it went.

Considering the amount of time we spent purging, tagging and actually standing around our table at the sale, I consider it a huge success.  We made a couple hundred dollars which figured to about $25 an hour of actual work.  Not too bad in my book!

Unfortunately, none of that money went to paying down debt as there was another large purchase that we had been putting off.  But the huge upside is that we could make the purchase with cash!  No debt and no reaching into our emergency fund.

It feels so great to make some quick extra money that we are definitely going to do as many yard sales as possible in the future. We have larger furniture that we are hoping to get rid of as well, so the next project is calling around consignment shops and seeing if we can get good deals. If not, they will be Craigslist bound!

Since starting this journey, it amazes me how much differently we approach situations. From needs and prioritizing to handling setbacks to making extra cash. So much of our debt culture is in the mentality. I am really excited to finally be in the right frame of mind to take back our finances!