SAHS: Underwear Edition

It's Stay At Home Sunday again, but this week, Keira has a fever and Mommy has a yard sale hangover, so today's theme is Underwear.

As in, "Mommy has been so busy planning her school's Giant Yard Sale that dishes, laundry, cooking, and other necessary chores have fallen by the wayside...therefore, Keira has no clean underwear." [I should mention here that Bear, voluntarily and without even a smidge of complaint or a sigh of martyrdom, did a good five loads yesterday after he got off work; they just didn't happen to include any of Keira's underwear. But my husband rules.]

And also as in, "There is no underwear situation dire enough for us to purchase used underwear at a yard sale...and yet, someone always donates some to our yard sale anyway. Can we agree as a society that in the age of recycling, precycling, repurposing, and conserving, used underwear gets a free pass to the landfill?"

This year, it was Heather who won the First Underwear prize, holding them up proudly in her (gloved--seriously, we get some gnarly stuff sometimes) hands as we sorted through boxes and bags of donations in our school's cafeteria on Friday. I wish I'd taken a picture of that moment, but it happens every year...I'll get one next time. (Oh, wait. I guess I won't--I'll be at a new school next year. Sob! Someone keep the yard sale going in my absence, and be sure to snap a pic of First Underwear 2012, will ya?)

Besides underwear, we got bikes, clothes, toys, books, a giant plastic play structure, "Air Supply's Greatest Hits," an M.C. Hammer CD, a zillion candles and vases, some roller blades, a vacuum cleaner, kids' ride-on toys, a few strollers, and...well, here's what it all looked like once we finished sorting Friday afternoon:


Fortunately, we had plenty of volunteers to help get it all ready, and Ellie was so well-behaved while I carted stuff back and forth from the parking lot and storage area that we decided not to sell her, after all:


(It's a good thing Keira didn't see this photo--about a week ago, she said out of nowhere, "Hey, Mom? Maybe someday we'll have a yard sale and sell Ellie-Bug." She said it kind of hopefully and in all seriousness. She'd been on the receiving end of a lot of hair-pulling that day, so we couldn't really blame her for fantasizing...but I'm pretty sure Ells would've sold for more than the $24 Keira predicted!)

Friday night, I baked a dozen brownies, made a pan of Cake Batter Krispie Treats, and baked and packaged 3 dozen cookies (plus labeled the ones my grandma so nicely made for the occasion), figuring it couldn't hurt to see if we could make a few bucks on goodies...and if they didn't sell, at least I got some practice!



As it turned out, all that was left at the end were some of the cookies, which had started to melt a little in the sun. Note to self: brownies sold first--make more than one batch next time!

I have this to say about yard sales: what's with the early?? I may love a bargain, but I love sleeping past dawn a whole lot more than that, so a yard-saler I am not (usually). In comparison to what cancer patients go through, though, and since I got to spend the day with some of my favorite people, the 4:30am wakeup on Saturday morning was well worth it, and by 7am we were in business!

Considering the Rapture was supposed to happen at 6pm that night, you would've thought people would've been a little more free with their cash--especially since it was for charity--but this was not the case. There was a lot of "TWO DOLLARS for this?! I'll give you fifty cents" and "Will you take $5 for the stroller?" going on, and I wished I had made a huge banner saying it was for the American Cancer Society instead of just putting it on the flyers. In any case, we made just over $700 in 5 hours, which is good money for anyone who isn't a high-priced madam or a professional athlete. Take that, cancer!

I couldn't be more appreciative of everyone who donated their stuff and/or their time to make this thing happen (or of any of my Facebook friends who didn't block me for posting incessant reminders over the past month). Today, it's back to laundry and unearthing our kitchen from the pile of clutter that's taken over; next week will undoubtedly be a more inventive, less lazy Stay at Home Sunday!