The Mother of All Yard Sales (Part 2)

After the sale there was still SO MUCH STUFFFFFFF! It truly is amazing how much stuff filled that house. Jan and I decided to donate things to places where it would help others the most. It's November now and since the sale nine weeks ago I have taken many truck loads away from mom's house. Many loads went to Savers. Truckloads went to the ReStore - a place that recycles things like tools, nails, sinks, wood, etc. I bagged up the rest of mom's clothing and took 12 huge black garbage bags of beautiful clothing to the United Way for the Women and Children's Justice Center to help women and children of domestic abuse. I counted the items to help on mom's taxes - there were more than 1,000 clothing items!! And that was after the sale and after we took what we wanted of mom's things. Wow! 

Jan and I also met and went through some treasures – one night we had dinner and looked at all the jewelry, taking items for ourselves and our children. One night we went through the hope chest and mom’s dresser. We have a box of sewing items to go through still. 

Jan also had the idea for one last sleepover at mom's - a grand hurrah! She and Steph and Steph's kids Sabryna, Mychigan, Daisy, Rvyer, Sawyer and Wyllow and I had a backyard hotdog roast and celebrated Daisy's birthday. We had a fire in the fireplace and used the patio furniture one last time. McKade and Amanda joined us for hotdogs later. The kids ran around the yard until after dark. We played nertz at the round game table dad built. It was a wild, happy, crazy game! The little kids climbed into the linen closet upstairs. Sabryna read quietly on the couch. We slept upstairs. I slept in my old bedroom. I hadn't slept there since the night before I married Riley - that was on June 11, 1980. I slept on the floor and thought of memories made in that room. It made my heart happy. Jan and Steph slept in Jan's four-poster bed in her old room. Some kids slept in Brett and Paul's (and subsequently Kelly's and then the caretaker's) room; some slept in mom and dad's red-flocked wallpaper room. We had a big breakfast together then, with Riley's help, moved big furniture to the shop for temporary storage. 

Paul Wheeler arranged for a 30-cubic yard dumpster to be placed on the property and we spent days filling it with items that no longer had use. Paul Ashton came with his truck and trailer and took two loads of wood back up to the mill shed. Several men came and took loads of wood - one was a shop teacher near Park City and he was thrilled to get free wood for his classes. Paul Ashton also hauled a trailer load of metal away to recycle. He has been a wonderful helper this past month. Brett came for a week and helped clear buildings of items. Lisa Wheeler Astling took hundreds of wooden craft items, finished many and gave them to the Festival of Trees. The proceeds will go to Primary Children's Hospital. We set items out at the curb with a FREE sign and almost every item was taken. I love the idea that mom and dad are still giving, still helping others, still sharing. They are useful things, these items, but we all have our own piles of things at our houses so sharing the excess has been wonderful!

Kathy Wheeler and her daughters Loni and Lisa came to clean the house. They cleaned every room and sorted photos and paperwork into boxes for each Wheeler kid (Brett, Paul, Jan, Kelly, Kaye). Brett, Paul, Jan and I spent hours looking through old photos, sorting them into decades and getting them ready for Paul to scan so we can each have copies. My friend Holly came over and helped rake leaves one day. Even though no one lives there, it still needs care. We let Dell and Steph take big items, like the stove and a bed, to their home. 

Many things of mom's and dad's have found new homes with family and friends and for that I am grateful. I'm also grateful mom gave me some things throughout the years she knew I would love having like her pickle crock, her potato masher and her nice butter dish. I'll use those last two today since it is Thanksgiving, and I will think of her. 

It has been a learning process for me, dismantling my childhood home and all that filled it. One thing I've learned is that I will let our material things go well before my children have to make the effort to do so. (I've already been purging our own house.) While it's been fun at times to look at nostalgic things, it's also been physically and mentally exhausting to have to deal with so much stuff. Another thing I've learned is that photos need to be labeled. We have hundreds of photos we can't identify.

The house is practically empty, ready to be listed for sale. I close my eyes and think of each room as it was a year ago - full of furniture and things familiar to my eyes, memory and heart. I cry, as I am now, that it's all gone. But I know we did the right thing. We were gentle and careful and mindful of mom's things. We did it together: siblings, children, friends. We kept good attitudes, had fun, laughed, remembered. It has been a wonderful home, a key gathering place for many memory-making events, a home to return to. The last thing I learned (or rather, re-learned) is that material things don't last forever - they aren't meant to. But emotional, spiritual things are meant to last and because of a loving Heavenly Father, they will. 

The Mother of All Yard Sales (Part 1)

We knew it was coming, cleaning out our mother's house. It was a "someday" thing my mom would laugh about. She said, "oh, you'll have so much fun someday," knowing how large the job would be. I don't think SHE even knew how large the job would be.

My sister had the idea to have a yard sale, an "estate" sale. I've organized and had many through the years and knew this would take weeks to pull off. So, starting weeks ahead of a chosen date for the sale, I started pulling everything out of cupboards and closets. Just the amount of glass items was staggering but the number of sweatshirts, sweaters, coats and shirts was astonishing. Each nook and cranny, room, closet, cupboard, basement and shelf was filled to over brimming with items.

Two women from Salt Lake vintage stores came and bought many vintage clothing pieces before the sale. I was glad these cool clothing pieces would have new homes with lots of different people!

We had planned to have the estate sale at the end of August but soon realized we would not be ready. We moved it to the first weekend in September, Labor Day weekend. We knew we would lose some people to vacations that weekend but we needed to do it. We chose to have a two-day sale on Friday and Saturday. It took many hours and many days leading up to that Friday to get things ready. I spent the day Thursday at mom's getting tables set up. We borrowed tables from Karla Wheeler and SueMarie Lamaker, used about five from mom's house, used several Amy had in the barn and I took my huge tables and all my card tables. I think we had about 16 tables set up. I put tablecloths on most of them to make them look nice. We didn't want people to have to look at anything on the ground. I borrowed ladders and pipes from Paris Ruffell next door to set up long clothing racks. We also used mom's and Amy's clothing racks and an armoire. They were jam packed with clothing.

The whole front lawn was used and it was set up like a boutique with similar items grouped together in rows of tables. There was a table of flamingo items, one of all sunflower items, one with Americana - red, white and blue things, one with 2002 Olympic things, one with Coco-Cola paraphernalia. One held all kitchen items - plastic things, decor, utensils, pans and more. One table had all clear glass items. Another had all vintage colored glass. Several huge tables held more than 300 sweatshirts (I quit counting at 300). The racks held shirts, sweaters, jackets, coats, skirts, pants, etc. We used a long horizontal ladder with boards on it to display blankets, sheets, pillows, stuffed animals and linens. One table had holiday items - Halloween, Valentines, Easter and Thanksgiving. We had decided not to put any Christmas things out because we didn't have time to go through all of them. There were stacks of record albums on the front porch - more than 100. We set up the bookshelf from the TV room to hold books.

We pulled furniture out to sell - mom's couch and matching chair, her twin bed, the stereo, end tables, etc. 

I had advertised the sale on KSL and Facebook and we put Jan's truck down on main with a poster on it. I got dollar bills and quarters from the bank for change. I took food for us while we stayed since we were going to have to spend the days and nights there. Riley has been wonderful and supportive throughout our marriage of me having to spend many nights at mom's house and this was no different - he stayed alone in Provo while we spent that time in Springville but also came and helped when we needed it.

Jan and I slept under the stars the first night. I slept on the twin bed and Jan slept on the couch. We went to bed late - 2 a.m. and talked for a while, laughing and reveling in what we were about to do. But we were so tired. I awoke at 5:20 a.m. and got up to get going for the day. She soon followed. We had put in our ads "no early birds" but people came at 7 a.m. as we were still putting things out. We were selling items before 8 a.m., the real start time. Hundreds of people came! We had about a 5-minute respite during the day and people continued to come even after dark. We had floodlights set up for us to work (not for people to look) but people came and we sold things anyway. We made $1,400 that day! We were astounded! We had sold the furniture and many other items at prices that were sometimes a little higher than you'd see at a yard sale. But since the volume of stuff was still so high, we lowered prices on Saturday. We spent hours Friday evening and into the wee hours of the morning finding more stuff to put out. We only slept a few hours than night too, still under the stars. We made $600 more on Saturday. Amy and Todd also made about $600 on things they sold.

Amy and Wolf were there both days. Amy brought us breakfast each morning. Andrea came on Saturday to help. A friend, Cynthia Hinkson, brought us many snacks and drinks.

We had fun. Many old friends of mom's and ours came by. We reminisced about the house and the time spent there. We gave armloads of clothing to friends, insisting mom would not charge them for her things. Tears were shed and hugs given. A picture of our mom was taped up out front for all to see, a photo from her years in the JayCees that a neighbor brought by. Some friends who came by: Kirk Roberts, JoEll and Paula Swenson, AnnaDale, Dawn and Rusty Wheeler, Marty Twelves, Pat Porter, SueMarie, Paris and Karla (all neighbors), Robert Carter and his wife, LeeAnn Gabbitas, Cynthia Hinkson, Chris Kelly and his family (the plumber who has worked on mom's house and yard), Jeff Carter, Cyle Cope, Adam and Holly Beck (who lived in our ward but bought the house across the street from mom's. Adam helped move big items outside), Callie and Brigham McKay, Alison and Penny Parker, Desi Parker and Gena Roe (who helped me load things to take to DI at the end of the sale). Good, good friends. I've probably forgotten to write some down. Paul and Kathy and their family came too - they had just returned from Africa. All the great grandkids got to pick what they wanted. The grandsons and granddaughters did too - all gifts from grandma.

At the end of the day on Saturday we were completely exhausted but knew we had to continue the sale the following weekend. There was just too much stuff. So we did it all again. We worked all afternoon on Friday to set it up again. Jan and I slept on the dining room floor that Friday night. It was getting chilly outside. We talked and laughed as we laid there and I pointed out we had probably slept in every room in the house except the kitchen and the laundry room and two bathrooms. I know I've slept in my old room, my sister's room, my brother's room (caretaker's room), my mom and dad's old room upstairs, the TV room/mom's room (the past five years), the pink bathroom (laying on the floor by the heater vent when I was sick), the living room (sleeping in front of the fireplace after coming home from skiing) and now, the dining room where the dining table used to be. It was good to be with my sister. We've gotten closer through all of this ordeal.

Before the sale I moved many 50 cent and dollar marked items to the front sidewalk and put a big FREE sign there. One man asked if there was a limit on what he could take. We told him he could take what he wanted. We put clothes and shoes there too. It was practically all gone at the end of the day.

We made another $500 that Saturday, practically giving things away for $1 or free. All told, we made $2,500 to put into mom's account. This estate sale was bittersweet. It was hard to see all of mom's things laid out on tables with sale tags on them rather than in the house where they were so familiar to us. It was sad to let some things go, like the stereo that we played records on as teenagers, but a young man was thrilled to buy it and about 50 albums. It was the right thing to do. Mom's life is coming to an end. She has what she needs in material things and care at the care center. More importantly, she is loved. You don't need shirts and colored glass to help you survive, endure and enjoy this earth life - you need love. And that is never ending.