To donate, sell or consign?

That is the question. Want to hear something funny?

Kyle met with our accountant a few months ago and came home to report to me a sickening amount of dollars we would be paying in taxes for 2010. I was physically ill for about a week. It's hard to explain why I had such a physical reaction to this. Paying the money was not a problem. We had it. It just set something off inside me and I immediately went into ultra conservative mode,  announcing a stop on all spending unless it was for groceries or bills. Period. Up to this point, I had been getting excited about designing my living room/library that a friend of mine was helping me with, but after the tax meeting, I felt like I didn't want to spend any money on anything unless it was essential to our livelihood. Then I began thinking of all the things I could do to squeeze dollars out of what I already had laying around so I could still do the living room without spending our money. My closet was the first victim. I did some major spring cleaning in my closet and parted with a ton of clothes and a fair amount of shoes. My sister had told me about this event called "Just Between Friends"- a consignment event. You tag your clothes and bring them on hangers and if they sell you get 65% of the profits.  We talked about getting together and going through all of our maternity clothes and consigning what we wanted to part with. The bins we had been using to pass around the maternity clothes were large and full to the top, which made it hard to see the cute stuff.

I love getting rid of "stuff", and it was so easy to part with the things I didn't love. Then, I decided it was time to part with the little boy clothes I was hanging on to since Baby #3 turned out to be a girl. So I decided I would consign most of that, too.

Last week my sisters came over and we went through the maternity clothes. It was great! We got a big pile of things to consign and organized all the keepers.

I finally looked online today when exactly this event is and it's Thursday. So between now and Wednesday morning if I want to consign, I have to tag and hang all those clothes.

Here's the funny part.

I would be thrilled to just drop everything off at DI and call it a day.

After all that. There are a few reasons for my lost steam. 1. Kyle met with our accountant again and after updating our deductions we ended up paying less than I was originally told. The pit in my stomach left and I've eased up on the wallet restrictions that were formerly in place. 2. I read the fine print and the place only wants maternity, infants, children or juniors clothing. None of my regular, non-maternity stuff. 3.Mostly, I'm just plum tired.

Part of me is wondering if that's just cover-up for laziness though. Am I being lazy? Perhaps.

I suppose the good thing in all of this is that I've got the clothes in piles and I am ready and willing to part with them all, regardless if I get a single dollar for them. I plan on consigning the maternity clothes but other than that....????  You know if someone drives by my house with a flyer asking for clothes and shoe donations for the people in Japan I'm ready to throw all my bags of clothes at them before they can flyer my next door neighbors.

At the heart of this dilemma is this simple truth: "Nothing is quite so beautiful as empty space."

The other simple truth? I want empty space more than I want dollars.

I think.