I've been feeling like I'm in a Martin Scorcese movie lately.
You know towards the end of Goodfellas where Ray Liotta's character is rushing around trying to deliver a gun, pick up his brother from hospital and cook pasta sauce all in the one afternoon? That.
I keep expecting to look up and see a helicopter following me around.
As usual, I've tried to fit too many things in one day. Leaving the narrowest of margins between picking up one kid and dropping another one on the other side of the planet. Well almost.
For example, I gave my son the challenge of organising his own garage sale so he can raise some money for a new bike. He sorted some toys out and a few bags of clothes and selected which soccer balls to sell. Then dumped it all in the hallway. I sorted it out.
I showed him what to write on the ads and told him to copy it on about eight sheets of paper. He got bored with that after about two sheets so I finished it.
So everything was dumped in the garage along with a box of my daughter's clothes. Then I thought I really should go through all our books kept in the garage and sell some. That took about two hours (it's really hard for me to let books go!) yesterday.
Then this morning i got an enquiry about the kid's bed I advertised on the garage sale ad i posted on Gumtree last night. So I did a deal and sold it while having a coffee in a cafe within about 10 minutes. I was feeling quite chuffed with myself and trotted off to Apple and Optus to sort out Nugget's phone (he jumped in the pool on Christmas Day with it in his pocket and didn't tell us till two weeks later!).
After another coffee and a cinnamon scroll I drove home and started sorting out the stuff in the garage so people could actually see stuff to buy. I also started to get those unused kitchen appliances out to sell. Then all of a sudden it was 3 o'clock! Well that little job I had hoped Nugget would do actually took about two hours.
So I rushed off to pick my daughter up from school, then rushed home so she could get ready for work, took them both to Nugget's music lesson then rushed back so she could go to work - 10 minutes late. One more dash home just in time to see Mr Moneymaker getting home at 5.30pm who asked why wasn't I ready to go out yet???? Grrrr.
I slipped on a dress and a bucketload of deodorant, grabbed my sandals and we zoomed off to the ABC studios. I had scored some tickets to a taping of a pilot show, which we made in the nick of time after inhaling a couple of cheeseburgers (I had forgotten to eat anything since this morning's cinnamon scroll).
It turned out to be an entertaining show and we even had time afterwards to have a couple of drinks in the nearby pub before picking up our daughter from work at 10pm.
Phew! I'm even worn out reading it back! You can see how I feel like this ...
I'm now sitting in our garage watching everyone walk past our display of 'must-have' items. Well, some have stopped to buy and the Nugget's Ikea bed was sold at 8am this morning. Besides the bed, he's made around $50. Not enough for a new bike.
There's so much stuff left and I've promised Mr Moneymaker everything will be gone tomorrow (charity bins here I come).
So if anyone is looking for a couple of bikes, curtains made of pink fur, a framed picture of a giraffe mother and baby, a Panasonic rice cooker, Kambrook cake pop maker, Sunbeam slushie maker and a whole lot of books, give me a call. I've got what you want.
You might have noticed I'm a bit of a greenie. Not in the militant-tree-hugging-vegan-eating-never-wear-leather kind of way, but I do try to follow my principles.
So I've given myself a way to be more aware of my consumption of crap. Not the eating of it (still love the occasional junk food), but the buying of manufactured crap. In particular clothes and plastic stuff. You know the kind, when you're out at a shopping centre for the sole purpose of buying your son's school shoes and you end up with the three-for-ten-dollar undies from Cotton On and that brightly coloured plastic container that you really, really need to stuff in the pantry and forget and swear at every time it falls out when you open the door.
I'll also extend this to limit stuff I buy for the house as I've just spent two days clearing out both my kids' rooms and THEY HAVE SO MUCH STUFF!!! They've forgotten half the things that were shoved into cupboards and bookcases (including some science experiments with sandwiches and apples uurrrggh!), so I'm encouraging them to be mindful when they tell me they really really need something.
The hallway is full of old toys and about a dozen soccer balls from under Nugget's bed. I've been trying to encourage him to be interested in other things beside the Playstation since Christmas so I've given him a copy of Kylie Ofiu's book, 365 Ways To Make Money (note, some of these ways are probably not appropriate for children but I don't expect my 11 year old to take up escorting anytime soon).
(The dog is not for sale!)
When I explained how a garage sale might help him get rid of his old stuff and buy him his next video game, he was all fired up to become an entrepreneur. And he has promised to do all the advertising, setting up, pricing and clearing up afterwards. He may even end up charging me commission if I want to sell my own stuff!
I'll also be setting aside some boxes to go to my friend, Danni's house who is sending a shipment of toys to kids in Tonga.
It's amazing what you find in the cupboards that you haven't used in ages. Have a look and if your cupboards are bare, come over next Saturday, you could get yourself a bargain basement breadmaker, some cheap chino's or a next to nothing Nerf gun.
