Categories
Selling Our Stuff

The {First} Yard Sale

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I just wanted to say thank you for all of your kind words and prayers! We survived our first garage sale last Saturday even with all the rain and wind. We had a lot of people come out, and it was great to see some of our friends! We sold quite a bit. Between selling on Facebook and our garage sale our total at this point is about $2200 in addition to $1000 I made selling some of my less used photography lenses (don’t worry, I still have 4!).  Not too shabby.

We still have quite a ways to go. Knowing that we still need to live in our house for the next 2 months, we’ve kept beds, couches, the dining room table, and the washing machine (turns out our dryer is broken but that’s another story). A lot of our furniture is being claimed by my siblings as one is moving out and getting her own apartment (taking my dishes and pan set too! Hooray!), and my younger brother and his wife are upgrading to a larger one. We also haven’t sold the tools yet as we are still working on remodeling the bedroom in the Airstream. Short answer, this was only the beginning. We’ll still have another big “Tool & Misc” Sale in June to get rid of the last of it. For now though, I’m feeling more relaxed that our house is slowly emptying out. We’ve made great progress in only 2 weeks and I’m really grateful for that!

We are planning on getting storage unit. I have too many wall portraits and canvases of our family (casualty of being a portrait photographer I suppose), we have a nice sleep number mattress that’s worth hanging on to, and we’ve promised the kids we will store any toys or stuffed animals they want. It may be that we’ll look at our pile in a few years and think “why on Earth did we keep that?” but for now its what makes sense.

Sam and I have talked at length about the next time we have a house. One great thing about selling *almost* everything is that we have a chance to start over and create a different life for ourselves. While we don’t want a ghost house with nothing in it, we definitely want to be more deliberate about what we buy and what we keep.

Categories
Faith

A Lighter Load

Our house is emptying out. As I look around at bare walls, empty nails, and general less-ness, instead of feeling sorrow, I feel relief. I feel freedom. I feel my burden and load getting lighter. When I have a house full of things, I have to take care of those things, store those things, and that takes time away from other activities that potentially are more important. I’ve felt the burden of material possessions more than ever as we returned from spending 6 months on the road living a much simpler life. Turns out there’s a lot I don’t really need.

Much like ridding ourselves of excess material goods lightens our responsibilities and frees us from distraction, our Savior, Jesus Christ, can lighten our spiritual loads and free us from the heavy burden of sin.

In the most recent General Conference, Elder David A. Bednar gave an address titled “Bear Up Their Burdens with Ease”. He related a story of a friend who acquired a 4- wheel drive truck, and drove out into a forest to cut and haul a supply of firewood for the house. He ventured too far into the drifts and got stuck. Undeterred, he cut and chopped firewood, loaded the back of the truck and then proceeded to try again to get out of the snow. This time he was able to. The additional load of firewood in the truck gave him the traction he needed to get out of the trouble he was in.

Elder Bednar continues, “Each of us also carries a load. Our individual load is comprised of demands and opportunities, obligations and privileges, afflictions and blessings, and options and constraints. Two guiding questions can be helpful as we periodically and prayerfully assess our load: ‘Is the load I am carrying producing the spiritual traction that will enable me to press forward with faith in Christ on the strait and narrow path and avoid getting stuck? Is the load I am carrying creating sufficient spiritual traction so I ultimately can return home to Heavenly Father?’

“Sometimes we mistakenly may believe that happiness is the absence of a load. But bearing a load is a necessary and essential part of the plan of happiness. Because our individual load needs to generate spiritual traction, we should be careful to not haul around in our lives so many nice but unnecessary things that we are distracted and diverted from the things that truly matter most” (emphasis added).

I believe that while  a figurative load is necessary in order to shape and turn me into the person God intends, too much of a load is unnecessary and can hamper that process. Living a life on the road is not an escape from responsibility, obligations, constraints, and demands on our time. Rather it is being more selective and deliberate about those burdens we choose to carry and freeing ourselves from the unnecessary and nice so we can concentrate on our family relationships.

Categories
This Week on Instagram

This Week on Instagram: April 19-25, 2014

Hitting all the best spots on date night. Koi (sushi) for dinner and then these from Dippidee for dessert. #yum #getinmybelly #datenight #lehi

Chugging along this week! Got the Airstream beds done enough to order mattresses, did a little bike shopping, celebrated Easter, had a fabulous date night, and prepped for our yard sale!

Categories
Utah

Airstream on the Salt Flats

As we raced across Nevada to make a decision to sell or not sell the house, we had one last stop to make as we crossed into Utah. More on this later, but here’s one of my favorite photos:

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Categories
Selling Our Stuff

100% Honesty – I’m Not Doing So Great

Today I am an emotional mess. Only, it probably didn’t start today, it probably started the second we pulled up to the house in the Airsteam and it has just been building over the last week and a half.

One thing that I struggle with is I fixate on projects. If something needs to be done (craft, home improvement, buy a TV stand, whatever) I seriously can’t do anything else until its done. Sam laughs at me and we joke about it, but I honestly don’t understand why I’m like this. Sometimes its not a big deal, and sometimes its a serious problem. Right now I think I’m falling into the problem category.

We have stuff. Lots of stuff. And I want it gone. Yesterday. I’ve listed a bunch of our larger items on KSL and Facebook and we’ve sold over $900 worth but there’s still piles. Everywhere. Its not DONE. Until all we have in the house is our beds, dressers, furniture my siblings are taking and what we’ll take with us in the Airstream or put into storage I won’t be happy.

It’s ridiculous.

I really need to slow down.

And I don’t know how.

Technically we don’t have to be out of our house until June 23rd. JUNE! That’s like 2 months away. Why am I in such a hurry?

I’m also a terrible mother when I’m here. Remember the awesome-always-adventuring-with-her-kids-and-not-sick-of-them mom I was for the last 6 months? She’s disappeared. Probably has something to do with the whole fixation on getting everything cleaned out of our hour. Super awesome mom got shoved in a closet and crazy mom came out. Sigh.

I’ve really been praying a lot recently that the Lord will change my heart. That He will calm me down, and help me feel okay with my current situation. Just pray for us okay? This is hard. Harder than I thought it would be.