Two weekends ago we had one monster garage sale at our house. With my parents and my sister's family all moving this year, my grandma's passing, my grandpa downsizing, and both Jack and Maddie moving onto sizes 9+ months (and being fairly certain that there would be no future babies to come!), we all had our share of stuff that needed to find other homes.
The "fun" started on a Tuesday, and from then until late that next Saturday afternoon we worked our patooties off. Everyone came over to our house each afternoon and just dove in and started organizing junk. There were 5 kids running around among us (3 preschoolers + 2 infants), so it was mass chaos as you can imagine. The kids, however, had a great time watching the action, playing hide and seek in the hanging clothes, and exploring the merchandise.
Throughout the week, I actually found the whole purging idea quite intoxicating when looking at it from the perspective, "You mean the stuff in my home that's just laying there not doing anything but taking up precious space, could be converted into cash?" Pretty cool. I was up until midnight each night that week scouring every last closet and drawer looking for unnecessary stuff.
The sale lasted two days: Friday and Saturday. We found it very interesting to watch the things that sold and the things that did not. You could never in a million years predict it. I had gone through some old "memorabilia" boxes and purged out some of my old keepsakes: lovely hot pink 80's unicorn throw pillows, rainbow beach bags made out of pillowcases in 4-H, chinsy plastic snow globes from Six Flags...need I go on? Anyway, had we not been having a sale, these things most certainly would have gone directly into the trash. But you know what? Those things sold like HOTCAKES. And my mom's expensive Talbot suits and beautiful gold-rimmed party dishes? Nada! What is wrong with these people?
We couldn't ask for better weather, and everything went well. We sold probably 75% of the stuff, and made a pretty good profit (so it was one of those garage sales that was actually worth the effort).
Here's one of our "litmus test" items to feel out the crowd -- the famous Pee Wee Herman doll. WE thought it might be a collector's item. However, in the glow of musty unicorn pillows, who wants something that might be worth something?
The kids had a great time playing together. Poor Jack got stuck in the saucer most of the time so we were able to get some work done. I know he was just dying to be free to get his hands on all of the stuff!
Gram took care of the kids when she could. Jack and Maddie are so cute...they're fascinated by each other (notice they're holding hands in that first photo)!
Needless to say, we were all pooped when it was over. Worth it, but soooo glad it's over!
So WHY aren't there any stupid pictures of you, Dinah!! These are horrible... but they do show the massive amounts of junk that we had lying around. I wish you would have taken pictures the day of the sale. These *before* pictures don't factor in the truckloads that came the night before our opening!
Posted by: the | September 26, 2007 at 07:30 PM