Garage Sale Blues

It seems like the past week or so, all I have done is move stuff from one place to another. My night time dreams have been filled with boxes marching around in my head, and clothes screaming at me to hang them up and set them free, and holiday decorations dancing with glee at the prospect of find a new home. I thought it would be unique to have the sale begin Friday after work and continue until Sunday afternoon. I had nearly emptied the 10x10 storage unit after carting several truck loads to my son Jason's house. We decided to have the sale in the back yard, thus allowing time to organize and set up. Jason decided he needed clean out stuff too and so did his brother Justin. This made for an interesting mix of clothing, holiday decorations, years of office supply stuff, sports equipment, etc, and JUNK/STUFF and the venue later grew from the backyard and continued into the driveway.

I posted an ad in the paper and on Craig's List hoping for a profit, but hoping more that this stuff would be GONE. Actually my goal was to at least diminish the size of the storage unit by half. The big day came and promptly at 4:00 on Friday, the gates opened and to my amazement there was a hoard of people waiting! There were people waiting at 7:30 on Saturday for the 8:00 opening and continued until well after the 2:00 closing. Sunday wasn't so busy. No one was waiting at the gates at 8:00. I later found out I was competing with a free Blues Festival in town.

I could go on about the weird things people buy and what they are willing to pay for them. My goal was to get rid of stuff, so I was pretty much willing to taking any offer. I found people really didn't want to make an offer but when I named a price they would tell me it was too high and then walk off even though I suggested they could name their price. Then there were the sneaky ones. I had one camera walk off (they left the manual and the lens cover)and the pants to a very nice suit went missing. Can't watch everyone all of the time.

After 2 1/2 days the garage sale stuff disappeared by 50%. That was a start and enough money made to pay for the ad and buy dinner. I received an email from Big Brothers and Sisters (as a result of my Craig's List ad) stating they would be more then happy to pickup any items that didn't sell in the garage sale. Wow! I called promptly at 7:00 a.m. this morning and spoke with a very nice lady who said they would be out on Thursday and would take EVERYTHING. I said everything? And she said everything and what they couldn't use they would try to recycle. What a deal. I explained there were at least ten 33 gallon bags and numerous boxes of stuff that would easily fill up a truck. Didn't seem to phase her, so the stuff will be in the driveway Thursday morning.

Ok, so that's one part of the storage dilemma done. The second part was moving the remaining items that were in the 10x10 unit into a 5x10 unit. Remember my goal was to cut the stuff in half. Well, I spent the remainder of the day shifting stuff and sorting some more, after all I have until Thursday for the "pickup" and it all needed to fit in the smaller unit. Viola..after 4 hours of moving (my aching back) the stuff fit in the smaller unit! And it is organized so I can find things when I am in the area. I did bring back several boxes to put with the items to be picked up by the charity.

I'll be heading out in the next day or so and hopefully not have anymore nightmares about garage sales. Several high school friends are rendezvousing in Pacific Grove this weekend so I'll be joining them and catching up on their current lives and reminiscing about olden days ...and will be enjoying much cooler weather.