Financing Skills

I've gotten a little bit ahead of myself.  You see, I have no money *sadface*

Now, there are some skills that can be learned for no money.  There are some skills I already have. When I said my best skills were research and buying stuff, I ignored my ability to sew, which can be a valuable skill after the SHTF.  Also, I'm learning to cook more from scratch, which does take money for food, but it is in the grocery budget, so I don't count it.  That is a valuable skill that I'm working on, because I hate to cook.  There will, more than likely, be no drive thru meals post collapse.  Most skills, unfortunately for me, require some money to acquire.

So, I must finance my endeavor.  I have a fledgling replica movie prop business in its startup phase, but it is more of a money suck than a money maker right now.  I'm also a SAHM of a toddler, so working outside of the home isn't going to work either.  My only option, sell stuff!

For the first time in my life, I'm putting on a garage sale.  I'm kind of excited about it!  And it really, really needs to be done.  The photo of the 13 gallon totes is all the stuff I have to sell, and I'm not done going through everything yet.  I'm selling about 1 out of every 3 totes of stuff.  I'm a packrat, like my grandmother before me, but an organized one.  Everything is in a tote and the contents are cataloged for easy location.  I didn't want to write what was on each tote on the outside.  No need to advertise what you have when you open the garage door.  I started out with totes A-Z, then some totes have two letters, then started numbering.  I'm at 40+ with the numbers, so I estimate 70 some totes of stuff just in the garage.

Why have I never had a garage sale?  Having just moved from an apartment to a condo, I now have an attached garage for the first time.  Yay!  Most of what I have is brand new stuff I purchased working at a fabric store or clearance at Walmart.  We were married for 7 years before my son was born, so to feed the baby crazy urge, I bought toys and boy and girl clothes from newborn to 5T.  Like I said, I'm good at buying stuff.  I also only let myself buy clothes that were $1 or less.  I spent a lot of dollars.  We don't have a girl, so all of that brand new little girl stuff gets sold.  That and the totes upon totes of fabric and holiday decor from my retail days.  Sigh.  So much stuff I have been lugging from move to move, now to be sold finally.  Being a pack rat feels like a disease, but I'm getting better!