De-clutter, organize, and sell

Why is it that you always need a vacation from your vacation?

This week has been full of just trying to get back to regular routines and organizing from a busy July. We are using the next two weeks to get our house in tip-top ship shape. The clutter has started to take over our house and we need an overhaul. 

Our house is only a 1200-square-foot bungalow, and with 2 little ones, a dog, and 2 adults, keeping it organized and de-cluttered is a constant battle. We just went through our basement storage 6 months ago and already it was overflowing with things that either need to be donated or sold. It is crazy to me how quickly it all piles up. 

The organized shelves after we cleaned them out. Sorry, I did not
think to take a before shot, and not sure I would want you to
see how bad it was. It does feel good to have it all organized again. 

Since my husband is working a ton lately, we are breaking up all the cleaning into little hour and a half chunks each night. So far we have gone through our basement and I have done most of the kitchen. I will finish that up and the bathroom during naptime today. We will have bedrooms, family room, closets, and garage left to do. Seems a little overwhelming when I think about it all. 

I am hoping that we are all done by this weekend so that next week I can get ready for my first garage sale. That should be interesting! 

I know that the more clean and organized the garage sale the better the sales, so I will need next week to get every thing clean and ready to go. 

When you have 2 little ones, doing anything extra during the day outside of our regular eating, sleeping, playing, and cleaning routine takes more energy than you would think. Bob and I use to do a lot of house projects before we had kids, but quickly those projects get replaced with just corralling the troops and spending time as a family. 

The beginning of my very, very disorganized sell pile.
Mostly home good items, but it is a definite full of
a lot of miscellaneous items. 

It takes planning and organization to just get those things done. We do less projects as a team and more as individuals. Obviously, one of us needs to be on kid duty when they are awake. The other problem is that you don't want to exhaust yourself doing a project, so when the kids are awake you have the energy to take care of them. They are rested and ready to go no matter what. 

Anyone have good tips for hosting our first garage sale? I know that organization and clear pricing are key. We live on a busy road, so I don't think that we will have much advertising needs. I am just planning on posting a Craig's List ad a couple days before and the days of. What do you do?

On a side note, I had Maisie's follow-up peditrician appointment today. She is doing just fine. The doctor is not so sure on the pnemonia diagnosis and thinks that it probably was just a virus. We will finish out the antibiotics since we had already started them. Other than that, she is back to normal.