Listing, listing listing

June is always very slow on E-Bay- at least for me. I guess folks are just to busy with graduations, weddings and such like. So I hauled a couple of boxes out of the garage and started listing them in Sellers Assistant in preparation for the fall season.
I have this long standing goal that I'll get all the boxes in the garage emptied and listed but I don't think that is going to happen in my lifetime.

While grubbing the garage (and our garage is grubby indeed) I found things we longer need and listed them on Freecycle which is both wonderfully simple yet wonderfully brilliant. A way to find a new home for things you don't need and giving them to someone who can use them. It inspires one to clean up and toss and pitch.

So I did! I'm never going to camp again, so the camping gear when to a Boy Scout troop- given the Boy Scout's homophobia, I'd of rather it been the Girl Scouts but they asked first. Bicycle gear went a new resistant who left his biking shoes and helmets behind and a wooden kitchen and stove set went to a young family. I was saving the latter till my kids had kids, but they are 22 with no SOs in their future and I'd rather the space in the garage. There is a lovely empty corner. Downsizing is good for the soul. FlyLady would agree with me. It's odd that Freecycle has an "old hippie", here's to the counterculture feel to it, while FlyLady has a homeschool / back to basics aura, but they share a common vision. Reminds me of my days with infants when the "Natural Parenting" and homeschooling Moms had more in common than either of them wanted to admit. http://www.flylady.net

The American habit of conspicuous consumption makes for strange bedfellows!

So Much for the First Day

Somehow in celebrating being on vacation, I came down with a case of food poisoning. Nothing like a night of misery to put the damper on being free from work. So my first day of vacation was spent recovering from celebrating it. I may never eat Mexican food again (which would be a good thing health wise).

So, it was a quiet day, spent listing books on E-Bay and doing some light puttering - not the full scale pitch and toss I'd hoped for. Daughter #2 came home from University of Miami and attacked her closet so she did the pitch and toss for me.

I offered multiple boxes of cast off crayons and markers on and I hope I get some takers. It's a great way to dispose of stuff you no longer need that isn't suitable for a thrift shop. So far I've disposed of camping & bicycle gear, as well as outgrown children's furniture.

So much for the first day...Let's hope the second goes more according to plan. Virgos don't like it when things don't go according to plan!

I'm on Vacation

Those of us in Education still divide the year into 2 - School year and summer and our calender runs September (though these days it's acutally August) thru May and then June & July. Our "first day of the year " isn't Jan 1, it's our first day back on duty and our "last day of the year" is the last day of school - which was today.

It's an odd feeling, a year gone. Time to reflect on what was good and what needs changing. I've still a couple of days on duty but it's sans kids so I 'll get things caught up, toss things and find things I'd forgotten I had. Lots of inservices of course- education is the only field that expects it's practioners to pay their own money and use their own time for continuing education. I realize Doctors have to do that to, but their's is always in exotic locations and is written off as a business expense.

The days slow down, there isnt' the rush to be there before the busses arrive. It's a time to regroup and regather. People who aren't in education gripe about our summers, but forget we cant' take an extra long lunch hour, slip away for a round of golf on a Friday afternoon or spend 15 min. chewing the fat round the water cooler. We are "on stage" and "in charge " for 7 hours solid and don't go anywhere without 18 little bodies in tow.