My Latest Lesson Learned

I'm going to start today by asking you a personal question.  I already know your answer and if you answer differently, then I know you're lying. How can I be so sure of your answer you ask? I know because it's something everyone has done at least once, and something most people probably do every day. Even if you're not aware that you do it.

What could I be talking about?  It's quite simple.  Have you ever judged someone?  Have you ever formed an opinion about someone before you ever spoke a word to them?  You looked at their clothes or what kind of car they drive and decide what kind of person they must be.  

Or maybe you have done what I did, maybe you saw a house that wasn't kept up, the yard was cluttered with stuff and the car in the driveway was old and starting to fall apart. So you formed an opinion that the people that lived there were dirty or they were the kind of people that were scary, kind of shady.

That happened to me this weekend.  I judged the people that were having a yard sale.  I'm emberassed that I even have this story to share with you, but I do and maybe you can learn the same lesson I did without having to do the judging.

We pulled up to the house and it was very rundown.  There was mold growing on the siding and rubbermaid containers outside full of water.  All kinds of stuff all over the yard and an almost broken down car in the driveway. I made a comment to my husband about being nervous going to the backyard for the sale (I won't repeat my actual comment because I would rather try and forget what it was).  As we turned the corner of the house I saw her.

CLEARANCE

Clearance.

Does any other word sound so sweet???  I love the sound of that word. Say it with me CLEARANCE.  What can be better than getting exactly what you need at less than half the price?  

Today we had two missions as we started out. The first being to find some furniture for our rather empty house. And the second was to find our little Autumn Bottom some much needed clothes (she is doing that rather annoying thing kids do and outgrowing all of hers).  

Since it's such a beautiful Saturday and we knew of several rather large garage sales going on, we decided it was a perfect opportunity to get what we need.  But after 10 sales we found.....NOTHING!!!!!  Seriously, no one was selling anything we needed.  Don't get me wrong a lot of people were selling furniture, but just because I want to buy used furniture doesn't mean I want ugly furniture.  :)

 But that brings us to my favorite word.  Let's say it again....CLEARANCE!!!!!  You see Autumn Bottom still needed clothes.  So off to the stores we went.  I'm happy to say my beloved clearance racks did not dissapoint me today. She got a whole new wardrobe for a ridiculously low amount of money

So now  I got to share with all of you my love of the clearance rack.  I am usually very devoted to my love, but you will catch me straying to a plain old sale rack, and very very rarely I will stray so far from my love and buy something for full price.  Oh the horror of that.  Those are my very weak moments when I see something and don't think I can live without it.

I try really hard to limit those times because that's not being a good steward of the resources I've been given, but I am just a human after all.

It's Been a Looooong Time

Wow.  It has been a very long time since I wrote anything.  What a lazy writing girl I have been.  I will say that I have been busy the past 9 months. But still, no posts for 9 months is totally unacceptable.  So, I should probably start with what's been going on.

Hmmmm..... first off nothing majorly exciting happened from January to June.  So see, I saved you a lot of boring reading about mundane life.  :)  Please feel free to leave me some wonderful thank you notes.  :)

We did take Autumn out of school in March and started homeschooling her.  That is an adventure in itself.  More of that to come.  :)

In July we went on our first road trip with the rv.  We went from Florida to Indiana with it.  It was definitely an adventure.  When we got there we discovered that our truck brakes went out on the way there and only the rv brakes had been stopping us.  We were so lucky nothing happened.  Then while we were there a storm came through and broke our awning and flooded the inside of the rv.  We had about an inch of water sitting on our slide. That's not even the half of everything that happened on that trip.  We were so ready to come home after that.

Nothing really happened in August.  But then in September we found out  where the air force is sending us next.  After doing some research on where we are going we realized that it will cost us less to move back into a house. The rv park on the next base is almost twice as much every month as the one here.  So after a lot of prayer we decided to sell the rv and move back into a house.

We sold the rv a week ago today and moved into a house on base. :(  But we've decided that just because we are living in a house again doesn't mean we have to go back to a consumerism lifestyle.  Since we sold everything before we moved into the rv, we have no furniture.  Well, had no furniture. We found two couches on good old craigslist.  Our goal is to buy as much furniture secondhand as we can, so that A. we save money and B. we will lessen the impact we have on the earth.

So I'm going to keep the blog because we are still trying to live a downsized lifestyle, but unlike selling everything and moving into an rv, the stuff we are doing now everyone will be able to do.

Until next time....(which I promise will be sooner than 9 months)