As God Is My Witness, I’ll Never Garage Sale Again
Posted by mimi on Jun 21, 2008 in dish | 5 commentsI’m not a complete Philistine. I know that garage sales are a Great American tradition. Some people plan their whole weekends around which garage sales are where and what they hope to find while browsing.
My sister decided a month ago that the two of us, our mom, and her MIL would combine for a multi-family, colossal garage sale. So far, so good. I’m in purge mode. Purge resulting in cash in my hand sounded pretty good. So we’ve been stockpiling things in the garage for the upcoming garage sale, imagining dollar signs floating upwards like they do in cartoons. We have some high quality stuff, too–coffee makers, stuff from Williams-Sonoma, nice clothing (from a smoke-free home!). My MIL kicks in some things from her recent move, too.
Lately, Florida weather has been acting like real summer weather–hot and humid all day, le déluge sometime in the afternoon. But this weekend was supposed to break the pattern and be lovely and sunny. Wrong! We’re planning to set up yesterday afternoon, and Noah’s flood arrives. It rains for two solid hours, then clears up justlikethat. Beautiful, clear starry skies. We’re up late setting up tables and labeling and pricing. Still got those dollar signs floating.
Oh, how wrong I was!
This morning, the sprinklers had hosed a good portion of what we set out, so we started the day wiping down half of everything–and there was a lot of everything–and fending off rude early birds who don’t understand that we meant 8 a.m. Eastern standard time. Folks come by. They browse. They leave. They aren’t buying! Meanwhile, it’s Tennessee Williams weather (hot as hell and humid to match) and cloudy. This does not bode well. Plus, everyone’s snippy and cranky because they were up late last night.
We get four or so decent hours of sale before we have to haul out the visqueen and cover everything up again because it starts freakin’ pouring. To add insult to injury, after all that work last night, plus getting up at o-dark-thirty this morning to set up, my take of the pitiful total is about $51. I could make better money than that working at Target!
So that’s it for me. No more garage sales. Tomorrow, I’m packing up my stuff and taking it to the Salvation Army or Goodwill. And that will be my policy from now on. You can bet the dramatically clutched dollar bill in my raised hand (while the camera sweeps back on the sunset vista to the strains of dramatic theme music) on that one.
I fell your pain. We did the garage sale thing before we moved. The DH seems to love ’em. I HATE garage sales.
I am so with you on the weather. DH will come home and say, ‘the weather wasn’t supposed to do this.’ He has the radar on his desktop. As far as I’m concerned, weatherpersons are hard pressed to predict yesterday’s weather. I figure it’s going to pour every afternoon at 3 and am pleasantly surprised when it doesn’t, but I never plan on afternoon events other than curling up with a book, or working on my next chapters.
And garage sales — I’m so over those, too. My idea of a garage sale is asking my next-door-neighbor if I can put out a couple of things when she has one of her frequent sales.
Otherwise, when we get a call that says, “XXX charity will have a truck in your neighborhood on Thursday, if I’ve got something, they can come and pick it up.
The man and I had one last summer (tried to have one) and literally, about two minutes after we set EVERYTHING up, the sky opened up. No warning, nothing. The rain just mocked us because it could. Now I just donate everything and take a tax write-off 😉
I’ve had pretty good luck with garage sales, but rarely do them because A) DH loathes the idea and bitches when I suggest it and B) they are a ton of work and sometimes you don’t make that much. I’m for Goodwill and setting the best stuff aside for eBay sales.
I’ve been thinking of holding one. Thanks for the warning. 🙂