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I have a habit—had a habit—of keeping things I didn’t want, thinking: “maybe I’ll use this in a production design job someday.” When I signed on to The Garage Sale, I started clearing my closets of those items. This was the production design job of someday.

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In my role, the project’s opportunity was to tell the stories of characters not through the objects they surrounded themselves with, as you typically would, but the objects they were letting go of. The characters were making an effort to reinvent themselves (knowingly or not), through the unburdening of their stuff.

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It’s an interesting process, to visually illustrate characters by what they try to sell to strangers on a lawn—what they have, how they display it, how they sell it. The script provided such great direction and Molly and Josh encouraged my creative interpretation, as they also unloaded their own unwanted things to help build each couples’ pile. In a very visceral way, the opportunity to tangibly reflect the experience of its characters as the project was being created, added an immersive layer to the story. It was interesting to be part of that, to be so personally influenced by the character’s choices to the point of participating in their experience in my own way.

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I didn’t let go of everything though. That “cool collection of cups,” for example—the ones that Rebecca fiercely re-acquired—I have them displayed in my window, each holding a bamboo stem. It is a very cool collection, reinvented.

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