Category Archives: Projects

Original cover of Flowers in the Attic. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Growing up, I always wished we lived in a house that had a cool attic. (What? Don’t all kids do that?) You know, I wanted an attic like the one from “Flower’s in the Attic”, well minus the selfish Mom and loco Grandmom. But you get the point. The type of attic that had enough space to run around in and play hide and seek. Well that never happened, but I kept daydreaming about it. For real.

Anyways, when we were house hunting I always checked out the attic to see if I’d ever find my dream attic (ok, dream attic is a bit much, but you know what I mean). All this rambling to say that as a kid, a huge attic = a fun place to hang out and play, but today as an adult a huge attic = major storage space. Yay!

Our attic is pretty large but unfortunately it’s not all useable space. But there’s enough space for lots and LOTS of storage. So if you were to take a look in our attic now it would consist of  50% Christmas items, 10%home decor, 40% baby items. Which means if and when things are purged, it’s the baby items that get the boot.

In our area there’s usually a few children’s consignment sales a couple times a year that I’ve checked out in the past. So this year I decided to participate to help get rid of unnecessary clutter. And it was fairly easy to do. I registered online and entered and priced my items for sale into their computer system. Afterwards I printed bar codes and attached them to my items. The hardest part of the process would have to have been the actual sorting. And here’s a few pictures of why.

the Little One trying on old PJs

Little One trying to convince me that they still fit.

However we still got it done. And afterwards I picked up anything that didn’t sale because we were having a neighborhood wide yard sale. So it gave me a second chance to sell anything that hadn’t previously sold. Here’s how we did.

Consignment Sale                                       Yard Sale

$130 approx                                                   $120 approx

- $ 30% consign                                            -$3 portion of ad cost

-$ 10 registration fee               -$17 kids (eating away our profits!)

$80 profit                                                                  $100 profit

Pretty good right?! Almost $200 for stuff we’d never use again that’s just sitting in the attic! And since this was our 2nd yard sale I feel like a pro, so if you decide to have one here’s a few tips.

Yard Sale TIPS

• only sale what you would buy
• if items are not in saleable condition use them elsewhere, like for cleaning rags or recycle
• price things accordingly. your goal is to get rid of things, not get rich
• be realistic and flexible
• whatever doesn’t sell, no big deal, just donate it

At the end of the day not everything sold, but we got rid of a ton of stuff, got a pocket full of cash and had a good time doing it. ……..Until we fast forward to yesterday when the Little One asks me (for the 2nd time since the yard sale) Where’s my giraffe shirt?

The Little One wearing her giraffe shirt. It's like she knew something was going to happen to it