Garage Sale

My mom is moving soon, and so is clearing out a lot of her old unnecessary stuff. Over the past couple of weeks she’s been getting things put out in her garage for a sale. The sale date came this weekend.

I drove up Friday night. I was going to arrive around 10:30, and I expected to just come in and go to bed. I knew garage sales start early, and I knew I’d probably have to wake up around 6:00 a.m. Well, when I arrived, my mom and some family and friends were still working, setting up the tables and items for sale. Arranging things, sticking price tags, etc. So I set to trying to help.

We all worked to past midnight, and we didn’t get to bed until about 1:00 a.m. We set our alarms for 5:00. After four hours of sleep, we all bounced up and out to do the final set up for the sale. At 6:00, the first shoppers arrived.

There was a lot of stuff for sell, and much of it was nice items including some big furniture. We had up to as many as 20 shoppers in the garage and drive way at one time. The people just kept coming and coming. I was amazed. People were buying things left and right, but it seemed like the tables and boxes were never clearing. It was a few hours into the sale before we could tell the sale stock was depleting.

By 1:00, the steam of shoppers had started slowing down. At 2:00, probably 80-90% of our stock was sold, and there were only 1-3 shoppers at any given moment. At this time we started clearing up, packing unsold stuff in boxes and bags to take to Goodwill. We still had a couple shoppers looking through the packed up bags and boxes in my mom’s business van at 2:30 — we ended up just giving some of the last stuff away. By 3:30, the “shop” was completely cleared and closed.

By 4:30, all friends and family (other than myself) had gone home, with lots of thanks. There were four or five furniture items that people had paid for and were coming back to pick up, and my mom and I waited, tiredly, for them to come by.

It was a long (early) and tiring day, but the garage sale was a big success. We got rid of a ton of stuff that we now didn’t have to move or pay someone to move — and we got people to pay us to get take the stuff. Garage sales are amazing.

Bullgrit
bullgrit@totalbullgrit.com