I brought two more carloads to the yard sale (along with today’s gift – muffins and coffee for the sorters) and I have another carload to take to Josh & Rachael (soon-to-be parents of my niece), and we still have TOO MUCH STUFF.  I will say though, that after 6 school yard sales I am finally starting to see a dent in the pile.  I’ve decided to start a new challenge when I’m done with 29 Gifts – 29 Messes.  The gift-giving challenge has kept the act of giving at the forefront of my mind, so I’m hoping that the 29-Mess challenge will help me recover from the last 9 years of over-accumulation.  We’ll see.

Since the kids are major contributors to the mess, I re-implemented their after-school chores and responsibilities.  I realized that one of the problems is that sometimes I’m not home to crack the whip and I can’t count on Ben to do it, so there’s a new sheriff in town.  I made Norah “the manager,” and her job is to check to make sure Aliya and Adlani have hung up their coats and backpacks, emptied their snack bags, cleaned their rooms, put away the laundry, cleaned their stuff off the stairs, and fed the pets.  So far, so good!  She’s a ball-breaker!

All this clutter-talk reminds me that I haven’t watched Hoarders lately.  I LOVE that show!  It makes me feel almost like a minimalist.   

Yes, I have reached the middle of the 29-Gift Challenge, and looking back on my gifts so far makes me wonder whether the challenge has changed my regular pattern of giving.  It has definitely made me focus on the gifts a bit more, but honestly I would have given all but 2 or 3 of the gifts anyway.  We’ll see how the rest of the challenge goes…maybe I’ll run out of ideas (or time, or money).

My gift today was two complete carloads of stuff for the elementary school yard sale.  The yard sale is this Saturday, so if you’re in the area, go over and buy some stuff!  This is an important fundraiser for our school, and it benefits the PTO as well as giving us a good excuse to clean out our closets.  I’m hoping to dig around a bit more and find a few last-minute donations to drop off tomorrow. 

Maybe tomorrow’s gift will be a special treat for the hard-working moms who will spend the day organizing and pricing all of the items for the sale.  Just looking at the mounds of stuff gives me the heebie-jeebies but they somehow make it look presentable and are ready for the line of customers first thing Saturday morning.

Come on down!
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Yes, that’s my gift for today – creme of tartar. The preschool teachers use it to make play-doh, so instead of putting it on each teacher’s wish list, I buy big jars of it for the teachers’ room. It’s so much cheaper! The teachers’ requests are pretty simple, so if you want to make their dreams come true, you can always check their wish lists online.

Here are some fun (ok…that’s questionable) facts about creme of tartar:

• It’s a byproduct of winemaking.  It crystallizes in wine casks during the fermentation of grapes, and can precipitate out of wine in a bottle. 
• It is sometimes combined with baking soda and other ingredients to make baking powder, or with potassium chloride in sodium-free salt substitutes.  
• In cooking, it is used for stabilizing egg whites, preventing sugar syrups from crystallizing, and reducing discoloration of boiled vegetables.
• It can be combined with white vinegar to create a cleaning paste for brass or copper cookware.
• It’s a vital ingredient in gingerbread house icing because it inhibits the formation of crystals.
• According to Dr. Wong, consuming 1-6 teaspons per day (“just shy of bowel intolerance”  :-o) will cure a yeast infection. 
• Mixed with water it will remove ring-around-the-collar and rust stains from fabric.
• Mixed with hydrogen peroxide it will remove a bathtub ring.
• Mixed with lemon juice it will remove ink from clothing.
• It will reportedly repel ants. 

And of course, it’s a key ingredient in homemade play-doh:
2 cups flour
1 cup salt
2 cups water
1 tablespoon veg oil
2 tablespoons cream of tartar
1 package unsweetened Kool-aid (any flavor)
Directions:
Mix all ingredients together in a pot, cook over medium heat, stirring until a ball is formed. Knead the dough on a floured surface. Store in an air tight container.
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I’ve actually been working on this gift for a week or so, but I’m going to count it as today’s gift because the only other gift I gave today was the $30 I donated to the city of Somerville because their no-parking signs utilize arrows made out of tape.  Tape peels off, people!  With the $180 that they earned by ticketing all 6 cars parked in the direction indicated by the mostly-missing arrowhead, they should be able to buy a new sign!!

Anyway…I have a niece arriving sometime in June, and I made a website for her and everyone who’s awaiting her arrival.

And for the rest of you I give the gift of heart palpitations from seeing an ultrasound photo on my blog.  IT’S NOT MINE!!! 
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I gave a couple of gifts of hardware which you can see on my other blog, but since they were actually on Ingersoll Rand’s dime, I won’t count those as my own gifts.  However, I did give a related gift to an entrepreneur in Kenya, who needed a micro-loan for his hardware store (!), where he sells “doorlocks, padlocks, chains, forks, iron boxes and other items.”

I funded the micro-loan through a non-profit organization called Kiva, which I heard about through my cousin.  Kiva’s mission is to connect people, through lending, for the sake of relieving poverty.  You can search for lending opportunities by gender, type, and region, and when the entrepreneur pays back your loan, you can loan your money to someone else.  The minimum loan amount is $25, and the organization has loaned more than $129 million dollars to entrepreneurs in developing countries.  Here are some stats from the Kiva website:

Total value of all loans made through Kiva: $129,498,985
Number of Kiva Users who have funded a loan: 442,524
Number of entrepreneurs that have received a loan through Kiva: 330,313
Number of loans that have been funded through Kiva: 181,141
Percentage of Kiva loans which have been made to women entrepreneurs: 82.29%
Current repayment rate (all partners): 98.47%
Average loan size: $395.59

Follow this link to see a short video about the organization:

Kiva Documentary-What Did They Do With My $25 Loan? from Brent E. Huffman on Vimeo..

You can make a difference too! What have you got to lose? $25!