I traveled to my parents house in still snowy Massachusetts. As someone who detests the cold, I was very unhappy to find at least three feet of snow STILL on the ground - but with sweat pants and plenty of fuzzy socks in hand, I was able to get to business - cleaning out my stuff!
It is an eventual part of life, your parents realize you are never coming home, and they want to reclaim what was once your space for purposes of their own: a craft room, a yoga pad, or Grandma's new diggs. My mother has been after me for a while to come get my stuff...though that isn't the word she uses.
Task 1: Polly Pockets. I forgot how awesome these are! I have most of the village, including the mansion, the pop-up drama house, and the magnetic play set where Polly "walks". I lined them all up on the kitchen counter and had a great trip down memory lane. This trip was double the fun because my mother admitted how cool they are - WINNER! Quick search on EBay and they are going for $6-$12 a set. Nice. These are definitely coming home - either I save them for my future girl, play with them, or realize they are a horrible choke hazard and sell them online.
Task 2: BARBIES. Again, great trip down memory lane. I decided to get rid of the cheap plastic sets (i.e. the Stable and similar sets of snap together, minimally colored plastic sets from when Mattel stopped trying making cool things and went for mass-produced cheap things), and kept the awesome "they don't make them like this any more" things, like the Tyco Little Kitchens play set. Oh yea, this spoiled little princess had the stove, the refrigerator, AND even the kitchen sink! The stove makes cooking sounds, and the front two burners have magnets of opposite polarity so that you can flip a special pancake! I think I now understand why I went into engineering! The refrigerator was slightly less cool, but had a real ice dispenser that made nose and shot out little clear plastic ice cube blobs. The best thing about the refrigerator was the FOOD. Amazingly detailed packages of real brand-name foods, like Wonder bread, and Pepsi soda (though I'm a Coke girl). The kitchen sink was attached to a wall of counter and cabinet space for storage with a dishwasher and a sink that sprayed real water (if you filled the special tray in the back). So awesome! Those are all safely packed away with a few of my all time favorite barbies to pass on to my daughter (or pull out and play with when I feel like reverting to an 8 year old)
Task 3: Beanie Babies. My high school friend came over and helped me go through them all. We tried to do some research for a list of the top value beanies. The engineer in me was determined to apply the 80/20 rule: 20% of the items would make up about 80% of the total value of the whole bunch - much better than doing the work on that 80% and only getting 20% of the money!! So many lists were contradicting themselves that we decided to sort by release year - all 160 of them, yup, I counted. Finally found one list that said the original beanies were usually worth the most - if they were also first generation. How the heck do you tell? Find an obscure website that lists out which tag design is which generation. ALL of my beanies are 4th or 5th generation. So how much are they all worth? About $80-$160 for ALL of them...before eBay fees. So not worth it, I donated them (except for specific ones to give to friends, a couple holiday ones for decorations, and one that looks like Riley). At least now they will benefit someone! Karma points beat out dollars in this case.
So now all of my items have been sorted at my parents house; now we just need to figure out how to get it the 1300 miles to Florida!!
No comments:
Post a Comment