Yard Sale Wrap Up

What a long and exhausting few days.  The prep work for finding things for the sale grew into large scale clearing and cleaning.  Many trips to the recycling can.  Many more piles of trash.  The end result? I can actually SEE the floor in the "box room".   And several boxes from moves in the 1980's have been opened.

The day of the yard sale opened on the chilly, damp side but soon warmed up to a lovely sunny Saturday.  My daughter's neighborhood (a U shape of three short streets) was packed with cars.  At times, traffic was bottlenecked and we had cars backing up to make way for cars moving in the opposite direction.

Daughter and I began with four tables and two tarps out on the lawn.  We ended with two tables and no tarps.  G and I took four boxes to Goodwill at 2 pm and brought home four boxes.  The stuff we had left was either: really awful or very nice.

I returned home with things I hadn't actually wanted to part with yet.  Nice things.  A few good pictures. 30 year old mugs from Germany still in perfect condition after YEARS of daily use.  In fact, daughter and I recounted the holidays etc, when these items were always in use.  I think I brought home the things I regretted having even brought to the sale.  Perhaps my ambivalent feelings created a field around them--keeping people from buying?

We discovered that moving a few items to new locations made those items candidates for quick sales by new shoppers.  I kept suggesting we "merchandise" the exercise machine (five dollars) but Daughter refused.  Finally she hung a few items on the handles and within 10 minutes (REALLY) we had sold the darned machine.  For Five dollars!!!   There were moments when we both were gobsmacked by what people will buy.

We made $150.  And split it.  We sold WAY MORE than anyone else.  But we sold a lot of stuff for 25 cents and 50 cents and one dollar.  The objective was to "get rid" of stuff and not "make money".  I didn't make enough for a recliner like Paula managed but if we had had more furniture and lamps and some gas powered lawn tools we could have purchased a nice Laziboy.  If we, either one of us, had wanted one.

My daughter found a brand new condition wheelchair for $20 for a client.  She was over the moon happy about this as they have been struggling to get this child a new chair.  Daughter walked on air the remainder of the day.  She was that happy.