Welp, in researching this post, I discovered a similar sentiment in 2024 (It Almost Feels Like I’m Giving Up). But I have done it. Well, that’s a pronoun without a proper antecedent.
So: The Lutherans for Life annual yard sale started accepting donations yesterday, and we took 17 boxes (and one piece of furniture) in two trips up to the Trinity Lutheran Church gym. We were not the only ones to deliver on day 1: On both of our trips, we encountered several other trucks with various (smaller) loads, although there was a U-Haul rented for such an occasion that we maneuvered around on our second visit.
17 boxes. Enough for a yard sale of our own, actually, which is atypical; usually, when taking things for the Redeemer Youth Garage sale (discontinued several years ago) or the Lutherans for Life sale, we have a couple of boxes. This stack comes from a couple of sources:
- We missed last year for some reason.
- I culled children’s videos from our library. Ah, when we had young babies, I started collecting kid’s movies on home media, DVDs and videocassettes, to watch with them or to play for them to entertain them. It was a thing, you know. You hear stories about kids watching films and wearing VHS tapes out. But: When we moved to Nogglestead, the video library was downstairs, and we kept the boys upstairs most of the time because the home offices were on the lower level. AND: We had DirecTV with built-in digital video recording capabilities, so we captured Sesame Street, Yo Gabba Gabba, Word Girl, a variety of craft shows, and other PBS works on hard drives, and those were our go-to watching entertainment–or child distractions, anyway. So we did not watch most of the videos at all. So I gathered a box of the things we didn’t watch and probably won’t, even with grandchildren, but preserved others (the entire G.I. Joe cartoon series and selections from The Muppet Show and related movies, for example. But a box or a box and a half of old media.
- The children’s books that I did not reclaim and which we did not keep for grandchildren when culling my youngest son’s library in January. So two or three boxes of books.
- Things from the garage, which I have been cleaning out for…. Three years now?
Ah, gentle reader: That is what feels like giving up (as I mentioned in 2024 and will recount again). I recycled a bunch of glass and bottles back in 2024, and I did not have only one bin to go through in 2024.
About a decade or fifteen years ago, I got the notion to drill holes into plates to insert clock movements into them. I did it with a couple of kid’s plates and trays and one or more ceramic plates.
So I bought a lot of plates and trays at garage sales (and a couple of hubcaps) and made clocks out of a few of them…. But, as with many of the things I was making, I came to a ceiling of sorts: I have a short circle of people to whom I give (gave) gifts, and I really didn’t have the confidence to make an Etsy shop or rent a craft or antique mall booth. So, I shifted to another hobby or craft so to give my Christmas gift recipients some variety. And I boxed a couple of things to spring on church’s silent auctions, although we don’t tend to have those any more, either.
I also mentioned (8 years ago) etching and painting wine bottles. Well, I also accrued many clear vases, wine glasses, and other clear glass to work on. And…. Well, I donated them to the Lutherans for Life yard sale. After a decade or so in the garage, they were covered with dust and cobwebs. And I did not take time to clean them.
I had gathered a lot of frames for various things. I had made pressed flowers from the gardens of Nogglestead with a mirror background (cut down from a mirrored tile or small mirror), so I bought a bunch of frames, expecting I would make many other things like the gift I gave to Gloria after she came to visit–and which she sent back shortly before she died. But I didn’t, and those microwave-pressed flowers have faded on the parlor wall since. But I had boxes of frames and shadowboxes and small mirrors.
Ah, gentle reader, as I rummaged through the boxes, pre-rummaging for the rummage salers to come, I wanted to keep all of it.
But I didn’t. I packed several boxes of frames and of glassware for the garage sale. A box or two of oddball plates I’d accumulated, some with thrift store prices written on them or garage sale stickers.
I did keep the wood, the plaques, and the various articles I bought for woodburning. I saved the mirrors because I might want to put them in technological devices in the future. And I saved some frames because I might use them (and because I would have had to move the electric smoker to get to bottom shelf, and I didn’t have time for that yesterday).
Who knows? Perhaps the room in the garage will give me time to work on projects. I think my beautiful wife would like to park a second vehicle in our three car (three cars in the middle 1980s, so three small cars) garage.
But, yet. So much reified potential lost. Of course, the decade and a half where these things went unused was also lost. And continue to be lost.
Until I go back later this month and buy it all back.
