The YARD sale

It must be a spring cleaning thing and a desire to make extra money that gets people to insanely think that it would be a great idea to put all their extra stuff from inside their house to their yard or garage and put colorful price stickers all over it!

So I decided to have a garage sale back in April or May and started pulling things from every nook and cranny in the household and purging of all extraneous, duplicate or non-essential. It feels good to clean out everything, especially with dreams of making big bucks on the stuff! I made a decision to sell the kids clothing from size 18 months and up, 6 tubs of newborn and baby sizes is plenty! Many hours of free time were devoted to this preparation over the weeks, but I still spent all day Friday getting everything upstairs and ortganized.

So the night before I was giddy excited and the morning of....I think I woke at the 5 o'clock hour....which I probably have not done spontaneously since I had to drive my dad to work before going to High School. I jumped in the shower and quickly staple-gunned my mark on the neighborhood (illegally).

We started getting the house and kids awake before hauling stuff outside. Rain was on the forecast so we were debating the location of the sale. Meanwhile....the dog starts freaking out and running around. And I hear some unfamiliar voices. I had a big sign on my front door saying "Garage Sale HERE" with dates and times. Apparently a sweet older couple thought I meant in my LIVING Room! They asked if it was 1st floor only adn I kindly informed them it was going to be outside and was nowhere near set up, and 2 hours prior to start time. Then I freaked out and jumped into hyper-drive setting everything up outside! I knew garage salers came early but WOAH!

We had one customer show up early and ask about the sewing machine I mentioned in the ad. She paid full price and then ....well no one else showed up! Then it started raining. Then it started pouring and my neighbors and I started wondering what we were thinking! By then it was 9:15 and the kids were already bored with the "Yard Sale."

We all survived until 4 pm and the big highlights were....

*The fact that a double storm passed by and we got white clouds and it was so beautiful!

*My faith in human nature was restored watching a sweet hispanic family fawning over this beautiful 1 year old on mom's shoulders named Benny. They put on a hat from Logan at that age and I made them keep it....it was perfect for him. So cute!

*I met some of THE cheapest people alive. One woman looked lower income and wanted to pay $3 for items that originally cost $20-60 each. That's garage sale prices for you! But she bought two of my vaccuum cleaners, so that was good! Another family was horribly cheap and my neighbors were bartering with them on some furniture and it got ridiculous. They wanted everything for nothing and it just grated on my nerves so I didn't give in to them. Some of the things they wanted, I later gave away.

*Men love a good deal too. Jorge had a computer there and there were probably 4 very interested people but they ALL wanted to pay next to nothing. A computer is not really a garage sale thing, but we had it and it sure attracted some interest! We lowered the price, but no one wanted to pay that....so forget it!

*People all bought used shoes. And ignored the clothing I spent hours labeling and hanging so it looked nice. Hours. And Hours.

*Pets are fun at a garage sale! Especially turtles. They were a HIT! My nieghbors were trying to sell them. In the end, they went for free to a family down the block. So they have a new home but the little girl who owned them was pretty upset. The most interesting part was seeing all the other kids discuss it...they were talking about how sad the original owner was and how exciting it was that they stayed local.

*The last thing I learned is that the next time I want to make some money....I will NOT be having a garage sale. It was soooooo much work for what the gain was! We had so many people come through and the average person spent $4. Not a whole lot! The biggest hit was some boxes of candy my kids don't eat. Everyone bought 1-2 boxes!!!