Wednesday, September 2, 2009

Productivity

I figured out a while back that I could only really be productive about once a week. That doesn't mean I won't get anything done the other six days, just that I will be super productive one day and struggle the rest.

It's good to know myself, I guess. I mean, if I know that only on one day will I accomplish much (I'm talking about cleaning and organizing - I can do errands any day), I can actually schedule that day ahead of time.

Last week a friend of mine (I call her a friend, but I'm pretty generous with that term) moved. Since I was her visiting teacher (pretty much a church assignment), I offered to help her out. I spent 3 days over at her house cleaning and packing, and then put on a giant yard sale for her. Of course, I took over a bunch of my own crap to sell too. The yard sale started on Friday and we made about $75. Not too much, but not bad either. Since this friend was leaving that night late, I gave her the whole amount, figuring I could keep what I made on Saturday.

I made about $165. Not bad.

Besides getting royally fried (Felix too, since he spent most of both days with me), the only real frustration was that most of the people who came were Mexicans. Normally I'd be super pleased with this, but it turns out they're cheap. I figured I was being pretty darn generous with pricing toys for 50 cents and clothes the same. There were very few things that I priced more, but they were nice. I had good crap! But man, those Mexicans would pick up a huge armful of stuff and offer me $1 for it. Stuff like that all day long.

My friend Darla came at the end of the day to take all my leftovers for her fund-raising yard sale next week. It was nice to not have to worry about taking it all to DI.

All-in-all, I think it'll be a long time before I do that again.

After everything was all cleaned up, I went to a friend's house for a girls night. There were 7 of us, and it was cleansing. Man, I love those girls.

So, it took a couple of days to get back into the swing of things, but today is a productive day again. I get so sick of the state of my house (like, it totally grosses me out) that I just have to do something about it. Thankfully, at the recommendation of a couple of insightful people, I have discovered Pandora. Hooray for free internet radio and NO COMMERCIALS!!!!

2 comments:

Kristin said...

What a great realization about yourself! Noone can be "on" all the time. I need to figure myself out like that too and not give myself so much grief when I am not totally on the ball every day of the the week. Thanks for sharing that.
I had a great time Saturday too. You are so awesome and a wonderful example of service. I am so happy to have you as a friend.

Than & Lina said...

We had a yard sale too and had a similar experience with the Mexicans wanting to barter EVERYTHING down! Mostly it was fine, but sometimes I just couldn't believe them! One guy picked out 4-5 things and on each item bartered for a lower price. Then once that was done he asked for all of it for even less than the already separately bartered prices! I couldn't believe it! However, they do tend to be the most frequent customers so that's nice...