Two weeks ago we loaded up the kids and left town one hour after school dismissed for the summer. We hauled up to northern Minnesota to Hubby's hometown with the plan to garage sale his father's estate. We arrived late on Friday night and crashed into bed with early morning work planned.
Work we did, four solid days of moving FIL's stuff that we had stashed at various relatives homes for the winter during the Live-in War and from the garage we had blocked her out of. On average there were five of us going non-stop for 18 hours a day with lots of help from a cousin, MIL's boyfriend, friends of SIL and even Hubby's 93 year old grandmother pitching in washing filthy items, dishes and generally keeping the kids pinned down somewhat. What a nightmare!
With the exception of one day of lousy weather, God was smiling on us as we were able to move the mess into the driveway and start spreading things out on tables and the lawn. My best estimate on the amount of tables set up for the sale runs about 20, some as small as card tables, several 4 x 8 sheets of plywood on saw horses, and at least 10 6-8 foot school/church tables gathered from near and far. The tables hand themes - that's how much stuff there was. We had a Harley shelf, a gardening table, hardware, tools, power tools, and a large tent filled with clothing.
We sold an amazing array of items from a Jolly Roger flag on a 9 foot pole, a sausage mixer, taxidermy ducks and fish, camping gear and a couple of push mowers that didn't run. We had a huge turn out of folks for not putting an ad in the paper or online. Simply signs at the corner and cell phones pulled out with the phrase " you gotta come to this sale" uttered left cars lined up down both sides of the street for two blocks.
Of the 15-20 trailer loads of stuff brought in, not to mention the goodly amount of stuff already stashed in MIL's basement we sold the vast majority of it with only one trailer of mixed goods going to a thrift store and one of larger pieces of furniture going to Restore. Hubby and I dragged home a trailer with assorted goodies as well.
Hubby's share of the picked over stash resulted in about 7 large Tupperware bins and a gun safe traveling home with us. Currently the dining room looks like the start of a hoarding problem as we haven't had the motivation to tackle the stuff after all the constant schlepping the previous week.
After the sale we then started clean up over at FIL's house as hope to get it listed soon. What a mess! We hauled one trailer of mixed metal to the scrap yard and didn't even have them weigh it. The next trailer of steel weighed in at 2,000 lbs, BIL's truck sported several chunks of random aluminum and a boat that the guys cut up into pieces. The kids scrounged 22 large garbage sacks of aluminum cans out of an outbuilding. I then started a burn pile and large amounts of scrap wood, pallets, yard debris, anything burnable really; and started feeding the flames while Hubby and BIL worked on getting a boat ready to sell. In the process of readying the boat Hubby was using a power washer. BIL went in the house for some reason came back out and calmly announced "We've got a problem" In we go to find several inches of standing water through the first floor the house. ( a pipe burst we think, didn't look too hard into it) Thank goodness we had pulled everything out. In the process of literally sloshing the water out the front door with a garage floor squeegee with no handle I had scrounged from the garbage pile, I got a good look at the house. We have all agreed it's pretty much a scraper and we can't imagine anyone actually thinking they could live there.
By the end of the week we were all just punch drunk with exhaustion. Simple mistakes and minor mishaps were rampant and so numerous I can't begin to remember them all. Sly remarks were constant as it was either laugh or cry and we laughed at the situation as much as possible. Some of the funnier remarks were " I'd love to have a time lapse of all the running around in random circles." "It's a new crappy reality show name - The Inheritance" " I could have been done a day ago if I would just quit losing my marking tape and sharpie" " I promise not to do this to my kids" "Unless I drop dead unexpectedly, the only thing left will be my hospital gown and the bed I die in". On and on the snarky remarks flew.
The kids frankly were left to their own devices. Both my children and SIL's children were left to run wild for the most part and called in to eat and go to bed when we looked up and realized how late it was. One particularly bad day, as I literally pulled a fighting Igor and Sonny Boy apart I was asking just where the hell my 14 year old nephew was because he was needed to wrangle the kids. (he was golfing, smart kid, I should have gone and been his caddy) Sonny Boy came down with a nasty cough which necessitated a trip to the doctor's office only to find out "It's probably viral, drink a lot of fluids"
All's well that ends well as they say. In the end it went about as smooth as one could hope. Every time I opened another box with a "What in hell was he doing with this?" in it, I had to remember FIL's quote to Hubby. "When I die you're gonna find stuff and wonder, just know I had a plan for all of it." I'd sure like to know what his plan was for that giant steel I beam in the back yard was.
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