One Man's Trash Is Another Man's Treasure

Yesterday was our annual family garage/yard sale. And today, I find myself asking, "Will somebody remind me why we keep doing this?" Maybe that is just because we had it at my house, which we have never done before, but seriously! My recovery today is probably comparable to recovering from surgery! Okay, well maybe not, but I really never thought I would be this tired after a little garage sale! Here's how the whole experience went...

It all started on Friday night when Lindsay and my mom came up to help me get ready. I had asked a few friends if they would like to bring things over, so they did... only, they left without putting all their things out on tables, and they even forgot to price a lot of things which only made more work for us! Linz had to head to bed at about 9:00 because she had to work bright and early in the morning (but don't worry, she did take care of her fair share!), so it was down to myself, my mom, and Greg (after much convincing) for the rest of the night. At about 9:30, I figured out that we had so much stuff that we were going to need more tables. It was extremely hard to leave all the work we had left behind to go searching for a table at Walmart, but we did and I now have a brand new $45 table which I may never use again! (Ha ha, I better find a use for it for that price! Lindsay says I should take up scrapbooking, but of course, I beg to differ...)

So, we got back at 10:30 and went right back to working, and with much begging and pleading, we got Greg to come out and help us. However, looking back now, I'm not sure if that was a help or a hindrance! He sat there and talked about how much "crap" we had at this thing, and that if we wanted to be successful and really make our money's worth, we needed to do some marketing. Here were some of his ideas: Have a crap shoot! In this, the customer finds the items they want, which they then throw about 20 feet into a tiny circle. If they make it into the circle, they get the item for free. If they miss, they have to buy the item for twice the price! :) Another idea was to tape up a bunch of boxes completely full of our junk that we knew would never sell, and give them to customers that spent $50 or more. And last, he suggested that we do a "Drive By Crapping." Yeah, it is not as bad as it sounds! :) He said that anything that didn't sell by the end of the garage sale, we should take the corner and chuck into cars that have their windows down. Seriously, my mom and I were about peeing our pants laughing! And of course, that only made us go even slower! We finally got to bed at about 1:00 AM.

Well, the next day was a busy one! We got a lot of interesting people, to say the least! Seriously, I think they expected us to give them our things for free! One time, Lindsay and I were sitting at our cash table and a lady came up with a pair of kid's knit shorts. They were in great shape, had hardly been worn, and were marked at 50 cents. Well, when I told the lady her total (a measly FIFTY CENTS), she flipped out and said, "Those are worth no more than a quarter! And that's all I'll give you!" Wo... Midol alert! And we had a handful of other customers just like that!

We ended the day with a lot of "crap" left over (as Greg would say), which we ended up taking to DI, but we all did pretty well. I made about $100 - not too bad for all that crap, huh Greg? But honestly, I'm so glad it's done. It was a long two days! Hopefully I got rid of enough junk that I won't have to do this for another 3 or 4 years! Until next time! -Ash