Monday, July 17, 2006

Garage Sailin'

We sold some stuff at a good old fashioned garage sale on Saturday. It was over at a friend's house, who lives in our neighborhood. All you have to do in our neighborhood to have a good turnout for a garage sale is throw up a few signs pointing people in the right direction. Then, put some stuff out. Then, go out there and make sure people pay for the stuff instead of steal it. We had trouble with the second and third part (our friends put up the signs so we were relieved of that duty). For some reason, we didn't get our act together until well into the mid-morning, which is past the prime garage sale crowd, especially when it's hot out. So we crazily drove around in our friend's van trying to transport our furniture from our apartment over to their house in time to sell it. This involved getting through some construction and a one-way, and negotiating the lack of brakes and steering in their van. Apparently we did something wrong, because about a half an hour later someone showed up to the garage sale yammering about some a-hole that was driving the wrong way down their street in a big red van ("oh! that van right there! is that YOUR van?? I think that was the van!!"). We got in big trouble for that. Then, we tried to stay outside to man the garage sale but it was so friggin hot that we wilted and started hallucinating and found ourselves bargaining backwards with people (we will give you five dollars to take that dresser. No! ten dollars!). Fortunately nobody was interested at that time and then later we managed to sell the dresser for five dollars. And some pots for two dollars. We gave away another piece of furniture to a friend that showed up. And another piece didn't sell, so got left in the alley. We made $7 total. And we had to take our friends out for lunch, so in all we lost $5. We decided we did ok. Especially because we managed to sell the dresser.

3 comments:

Peggy said...

I had a garage sale before I left the US for foreign shores. For me (and I suspect it was for you too) more about getting rid of stuff rather than making money. It is fun. Shame they don't have them here.

J-Funk said...

too true! As my dad said recently (he's moving, too): packing stinks, but I sure am enjoying purging!

Also I forgot to mention that it was kind of a neighborhood get-together, too... neighbors would drop by barefooted or in their slippers, sit down with their coffee and chat for a half an hour, buy maybe one item, and then trade places with the next neighbor.

Peggy said...

Oh how very very cool!

Time to take a break

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