Garage sales

Garage sales are a true American pasttime.  Some people, like my hubs, spend excessive amounts of time watching a borderline baseball team skim by, while others spend countless hours doing "crafts" and zoo trips with their cute little kids.  Blah! Spending time with kids in appropriate learning and stimulating environments! BAh!  Not for me!

Early on, I introduced my kid to the joys and pleasures of garage sales.  Poking around peoples belongings, touching crap that is dirty and used, not knowing where it's been.  Looking at old, unpopular, water stained prints in frames, piles of stuffed animals, mismatched dishes.  Spending so much time, hunkered over boxes of endless books about home management, Algebra text from 1986, and books on discovering peace and religion. 

It's kind of the bonding time for me and my mom.  She loves garage sales.  And boy, does she believe that she is the garage sale expert to beat all experts.  (And who aspires to be an expert in garage sales?)  Time and time again, we've driven by a sale, stopped and perused the wares.  And time and time again, we get back in the car and my mom will comment, "Boy they sure priced their stuff high?  They need me to show them how to price their stuff to get rid of it!"  Sometimes she's just point blank, "They had a bunch of crap out there!" 

She has producing a garage sale down to a fine art and believes in presentation and layout for efficent and cost effective sales.  It's an Olympic event getting ready for a garage sale with her!  We're always up until 2 or 3 in the morning getting set up and laying things out.  One of her many pet peeves:  take things of the boxes and spread them out on tables.  Another pet peeve:  take clothes out of the plastic bins and stop making me bend over a box and dig.  She says, "I won't do it! I just won't stand over a box and dig through clothes or anything else!"  "They should put those books on a table that is waist high so people can look at them. I bet they'd sell more that way.  I know I'd look at them. I'm not going to bend over a box of books.  I just can't!" 

Certainly, reasonable observations.  I told you she is an expert.  Another of her pet peeves: endless piles of clothes.  She won't stop at a garage sale that has a lot of clothes.  Maybe she's a snob like that or maybe she's got the right idea.  Who wants to buy clothes that another person has worn?  Have you seen the clothes people put out?  You CAN throw some things away, you know.  Those faded Levi's with holes in the knees....really, you want $2.00 for them?  That shirt has a stain on the chest?  If you won't wear that, why would anyone else?  Pitch it!  Use it as a cleaning rag!    My biggest pet peeve at garage sales:  underware!  Yep, bras and underware thoroughly gross  me out!  WTF!  Who is going to buy used underware, even if it is clean!  Hell NO!  And used bras?  I just threw up a little in my mouth!  (Interestingly, my mom has had grand success at selling bras and underware at her garage sales.  Puke!)

I really love those sales with the FREE boxes.  My kid loves those too.  She doesn't have to beg me for a quarter and it is usually a McDonald's Happy Meal toy or a broken piece of jewelry.  I'm a digger.  I like to pilfer through boxes looking for a little nugget of interest.  I'm the kind of person who likes going through the junk drawer!  You just never know what you are going to find!  I think the FREE box also attracts people.  It keeps the noisy kids busy while you peruse the wares.  I'm a fan.  On the other hand, I despise people who sell items that they got for free!  We visited this garage sale once, of a former flight attendant.  She had a huge plastic container of hotel shampoos, conditioners and lotions.  Makes sense, she's a flight attendant.  But she was selling these little treasures for, like, 2 for a dollar.  A bit steep considering they were free from the hotel and she didn't even pay for the hotel stay in the first place!  WTF!  We all know that the quality of the shampoo and lotions are not high end.  They're packaged to appear to be top quality, upscale.  One dollup of lotion water tells you otherwise!  And what sucker falls for that shit?  Me! I bought like six bottles of the little gems.  Loser.

All of this garage sale talk stems from my bright inclination to have a garage sale.  I looked at the growing pile of cast away clothes of my daughters and surmised that I could make a few bucks instead of just taking them to good will like I usually do.  Brilliant.  I went about folding and sorting and strengthened my resolve to have a garage sale.  But I promised myself that I would have a cheap sale, get rid of this shit and not be so arrogant in pricing the stuff. A quarter a piece.  Better yet, put as much as you can in a plastic bag for $5.00.  That'll get rid of this stuff and make me a little change.  I haven't told my hubs about my plans yet.  He'll freak.  One: it'll have to be on a weekend that we normally go to lake.  I work the opposite weekend.  Two: it means he'll have to carry shit up from the basement.  Three:  why can't we just take it to good will or put it on the curb. Someone will pick it up.   He's right, people will pick up anything from the curb.  That's another blog entry.

Well, I've enlisted the neighbor in this garage sale adventure.  I'll make more solid plans and THEN break it to the hubs.  He'll get over it.  Wish me luck and I'll let you know when the sale is.  Maybe you can stop by.