Garage Sales...Jury is Still Out

So, I had a garage sale this weekend.  I've been threatening to do it for years.  I can't stand clutter, mess, too much stuff.  Periodically I get a wild hair and go about the house, shoving unnecessary things into a box and labeling it "garage sale" for husband to shove into the attic.  Well, it turns out that if you do that enough, you eventually pretty much have to have a garage sale.  In the past, when I  have mentioned this idea to husband, he has groused and rolled his eyes, not thrilled at all with the idea.  This time, he went into the attic and hauled down approximately 30 large boxes of baby clothes, toys, old dishes, never used wedding gifts, old electronics, you get the drift.

So, off I went to the local newspaper to get my permit and place my ad.  I spent the better part of my evenings last week assembling the garage sale in my garage (go figure) after exhausting my friends of their stockpile of folding tables large and small.  When the big day arrived, I was ready, with $40 in small bills and change stored in as wooden box, my mother to run interference on my kids, and a NookBook pre-loaded.  Then nothing. And more nothing.  Then, car after car after car of people picking through my stuff.  Then nothing.  This went on for two days and the final tally was about $250.  Sound pretty good, right?  Unless you count the fact that I could have made approximately that same amount working 16 hours at my part-time job, and I spent way more than 16 hours on this madness.  Then there is the fact that my mother cleaned out an entire closet from my grandma's house and brought it here as her "donation" to the sale, and about 85% of it didn't sell.  So, now I have an entire closet in my house dedicated to barely used grandma-esque Dillards clothes (she has a credit card and she's not afraid to use it, people).

Tomorrow, I make a call to Goodwill and hope they will come make the final step in de-garage sell-ing my house.  It was a good learning experience and a little fun to realize that I pretty much has a couple hundred dollars in cash sitting around my house.  But, it was a lot of work, and a little bit strange trying to sell little bits of my life, however small and insignificant.  Will I do it again?  Probably.  I mean, that's the thing with life, we keep growing and leaving the old stuff behind.  If you can follow the three R's of green living (reduce, reuse, recycle), garage sales make perfect sense.  Even if they are a ridonculous pain in the arse!

PS-If you are a softie like me, chances are you will spend a great deal of your garage sale time collecting and re-boxing those "special" items that you just can't sell.  Christmas dresses, first feety pj's, a favorite toy, newborn clothes, particularly cute outfits and so on.  This will mean that you will end up with a (hopefully smaller) pile of boxes labeled "keep" that you have to convince husband to haul back into the attic.  Good luck with that!!!