Swap!

I had every intention (I feel like I've said that a lot lately) of getting up at 4:00 this morning to have two hours of a quiet house, hot coffee, devotional time, and maybe even a shower for 2014, but we were up a lot last night with Jonah, so he was my alarm at 6:00 this morning.

We've been nap training.  We're on day 4 and it's going really well, thanks to our amazing nanny who came over on Friday to show me what to do.  But I guess last night Jonah needed to see if the boundaries still apply when the sun's not up.  Turns out, they do.  And it turns out this may be the explanation of my store list on my phone notes section entitled "HEB" (our grocery store here in south Texas) and why it reads as follows: wine.

So, after a typical day of thinking, "Hey!  I got this!" and subsequently remembering at 11:57 that I have a dentist appointment at noon and realizing I'm in the Wal-Mart parking lot (not near the dentist) where I just shopped for CLOTHES for MYSELF (are you sensing the horror here?) and also realizing that I have my precious son with me who charmed everyone in Wal-Mart with his smile but still doesn't go to the dentist and who needed to be dropped off at home in 1.5 minutes and the man coming to pick up all the clothes from a swap we had over the weekend is at our front door and no one's there...after all that...I'm sitting down to blog.  It was the lip gloss.  Any time I apply lip gloss I think I have it sooooo together.  Gloss cometh before a fall. 

Well.  Let's get to it already.  On Saturday morning I hosted a clothing and home goods swap!  I emailed my MOPS group earlier in the week and told them to clean out their closets and bring everything over.  Anything left I'd load up and donate to our local battered women's shelter (which apparently will be tomorrow.  See above.).

Here's everything of mine laid out.  Is that a ton or what?  It's all stuff that's too small now and even if I were to lose all the weight next week, it's just either been worn too much and I'm sick of it, or it's just too old.  Plus, all of my pants suddenly went out of style!  Like poof!  Pants have to be tapered now or you look like you're from the, well, week before this one!! 

 Starting with the basket next to the brown chair...here are some 'shopping bags' for clothing selections.

 The left two chairs against the bar had pajamas, sweats, tees, and exercise clothes.

 The front side of the table was divided into tanks, short sleeve, and long sleeve.  Underneath were shoes.

 

Two chairs behind the table had bags, purses, accessories, and dresses.

 A card table against the wall showcased the home goods, and two chairs to the right of it held jackets and coats.  (At this point in reading my mom is zooming in on pics to see what I'm getting rid of and beginning to worry about all of it.)

 I decided to keep this little chunk of a find...

I don't have a pic, but I also made the downstairs bath available as a fitting room, and moved our full length mirror down next to it.  It worked great for people to try on and decide what they liked!

All in all it was a lot of fun and much more comfortable than a garage sale.  It was shorter (9am - noon come and go), indoors, I knew who was here, and we had coffee and donut holes.  You just can't beat coffee and good friends!  And the best part is not only do we have cleaner and more efficient closets now, but we got to give to a great cause too.  So get to swapping!  You can swap with anything!  Baby clothes, furniture, recipes, services, meals, you name it!

By the way, if I die in Wal-Mart, please drag my body to Nordstrom.