Back To The Dishes / Yard Sale Update

The yard sale yesterday was a success. We reached our goal of being able to buy a new set of dishes. Oh, and the best part was I didn't have to sit through this one. My husband took over while I went on an appointment with a client. Hooray, husband!

When I pulled up everything was gone except for this....

Of course, these were the main things we wanted to sell but good news, we got rid of the green ivy dishes! My husband said quite a few people admired these dishes but when they picked them up complained of the weight and one even said they just wouldn't fit right in the dishwasher. HA, exactly.

Well, I have to say thanks to those of you that recommended going with the white Corelle. We bought these today.

We started with a place setting of 8 and will buy more when we figure out how many we actually need. I think we may even buy different size bowls. Really I think the white was the best choice because we can go with any color scheme in the kitchen and the options are endless if I want to add to the collection.

On with the search for a new home for the dishes. One small step toward downsizing but one giant leap towards a simpler life.

Downsizing Dishes

We have a neighborhood yard sale coming up in three weeks so we are starting to talk about what we want to sell since we plan on downsizing. The whole idea is liberating to me.

At last count I think I have moved 13 times in the last 17 years. Each time I moved I shed more belongings. It felt like the weight was literally being lifted off of me. So, now the process begins again. Since our house is not yet sold we are taking baby steps. We are doing things that can benefit us now and will eventually have to do when it is time to downsize.

Here is our first obstacle: DISHES! The classic case of his, mine and ours. We have always had the room for them so we never bothered getting rid of any.

Here we have his, Corelle with green ivy. I'm not a fan of the ivy at all but love the Corelle because they are virtually indestructible and great for the kids. We have enough for 8 place settings but that really isn't enough for our family. We do not use paper plates and a family of five can go through quite a few dishes in a day.

Here is the set of dishes I came with. I love them but they are too heavy for the kids. They all are bringing their plates to the sink now and I want to make it as easy as possible! I only have a place setting for 4 so they have to go.

Here we have ours from the wedding registry. When we picked this Pottery Barn set we thought we would love them. We are big fans of Pottery Barn but as we buy more of their product they start losing a little more points with me. The quality is lacking. Two plates have been broken so far. My husband found out the hard way that the plates are not microwaveable and another time he just put the plate down on the counter a little harder than usual and it snapped in half. With 3 kids I can't have my plates snapping in half. I don't like the plates because they are more bowl like and I don't like when my food runs together. (I know, I know it all goes to the same place)

See, they all fit quite nicely. This won't be the case in the next house. So far we haven't looked at any with 42" tall cabinets.

While I'm at it I will throw in the cups as well. We all use the cheap plastic (again, indestructible) cups.

These are my lovely little goblets we bought from Pier1 last year but they have been tucked away in a box ever since. I think it's time for the grown ups to break away from the plastic! Needles to say no matter what dishes we buy this will be the glass that goes with them.

So, this is what we eat on until the yard sale. All of the dishes will go and we will buy one set that the whole family can use but it still has to look nice. Top priority is that it has to be nearly indestructible and second fairly inexpensive. Corelle is still an option if we find a pattern we can agree on. I am almost wanting to do something a little retro in the next kitchen.

Here is where you come in. I have been scouring websites looking for indestructible fairly inexpensive dinnerware and I would love to get some input from my readers. What do you use at home? What do you like and dislike about your dishes? I would especially love to hear from those with kids.

The yard sale is April 19th so I have less than a month to find new dishes. The next couple of weeks I will continue to search my house for items that have extended their stay. It is time to shed a few more inches.

House Selling Update

I thought it was time to give you a little update on the selling of our house. There hasn't been a lot going on, we had maybe 7 people look at it until our contract with our realtor expired in January. We decided to interview other Realtors because we weren't terribly happy with the last one. (I guess I was looking for someone a little more organized?) We narrowed it down to two wonderful Realtors and ended up hiring one for selling and one for purchasing. We re-listed our house in February and so we wait.

We have gone back and forth on whether we want to build or buy existing. Overall, I think we are ready for a project to take on so we are going to buy existing and have a little fun making it our own. The house on 11 acres we checked out had foundation issues so we passed. We have to sell our house first anyways so we continue to look. We've also agreed 11 acres may be a little much. So we are trying to stay at 1/2 acre - 2 acres. We are on a postage stamp size lot right now and want more room for the kids to run not necessarily get lost.

The main purpose of this move is to downsize and live a little more simple. I plan on sharing the whole process with my readers and hopefully we can all share some advice on the subject.

I look forward to all the fun we can have in our new home. The best part is that the size will not be too overwhelming for decorating. I'm ready to step out of the box and try some new things.

House for Sale

It's official, our house is on the market. We decided to give it a go and see what happens. After I posted here about downsizing my husband and I started talking more about the possibilities. The bottom line is if we downsize we will be able to put more money into savings and still live a little. Our home now is awesome, just a little super sized. We really don't need all this space.

My husband checks regularly to see what land is available. We are basically on a zero lot line now and would love to have an acre or more. In his searches he found a 1700 sq. ft. home on 11 acres. We checked it out about a week ago and we saw some potential. It could technically be lived in as it is but it needs a lot of TLC. We would pretty much gut the inside and start over to make the space most efficient. The boys could run forever on 11 acres and maybe finally get a puppy.

It will be interesting to see how everything falls in to place. It is all in God's hands. It will be a small miracle if our house sells the way the market has been.

Of course, I will blog about it all and share tons of pictures.

Do I Really Want to Downsize?

The topic of downsizing recently came up on Unclutterer. A reader had asked for advice regarding two rooms she had de-cluttered and when it was all said and done there was no real use for the rooms. She really wanted to get rid of everything in them but did not want two empty rooms. A suggestion was made to downsize if she had unused space. The comments that followed were interesting.

Seeing this chart of the homes increasing in size as time goes on really made me think. I often wonder how my Grandmother (I get the organizing gene from her.) kept her house so tidy and organized when her children were growing up. She had four kids and her house was always spotless. I love to organize but cleaning is far from my favorite thing to do. My mother and I were talking about this subject one night and it dawned on me that my grandparents house then was at most 1200 sq.ft. That was an average house then. Now, I have almost triple the size of house they had and I wonder why it is so hard to maintain. I am holding myself to a completely different standard.

We see the house as being an investment but I wonder if we went overboard. When all 5 of us are home we usually occupy the same 200 sq. ft. We have talked about downsizing but I wonder how much we would really be willing to give up.

We did find a cute little 1400 sq. ft. home on 5 acres for sale ....... Something to think about.