Wow, first new post in what…months?

Yeah, I’ve been away for a while. But hey, you’re looking good. You been working out or something? Lost weight? Been through puberty? Something seems different about you.

Yeah, I’m doing alright. A lots been going on lately…you know, keeping busy and all. Oh hey, the fiancé and I moved in together! Got a nice little place. You should stop by sometime and by sometime I mean don’t stop by or I’ll throw rocks at your car.

Thing is…I’ve got crap…she’s got crap…and when we moved in together we conglomerated our crap to make a house full of crap.

So we decided to have ourselves a little garage sale this past weekend. Of course, we had to be cutesy and called it a “We’re getting hitched” sale as most of the money we made is going to our wedding next spring. Aw, we’re a funny bunch.

So everything that we once thought we couldn’t live without was drug out of the basement and garage and displayed up and down the driveway and in the front yard. Of course the second I put down the final table that we were going to sell (and thus cemented my getting a hernia) the rain started to fall. While the smarter thing for me to have done was cover said items with a tarp to protect it from the rain, I being of much muscular-ness hurriedly threw everything back in the garage. As soon as the last item was thrown in the rain stopped. I flipped off the sky.

Now I had never set up a garage sale before and don’t really consider myself much of a salesperson. Luckily, there’s this thing called the internet that you can find just about any kind of information on, so I decided to Google the word “garage sale tips” and got a very informative web page.

Below is the suggestions the web page provided about having a garage sale and what I thought about each one:

Suggestion: Have coffee and donuts for the first customers that arrive to your garage sale!

My reaction: Screw that

Suggestion: Price your items low so that they’ll move fast!

My reaction: Anything that isn’t sold will be thrown over the fence into my neighbor’s yard.

Suggestion: Print up a small history on all of the items that you are selling. People will love to know that every item has a story and will be pleased to purchase it.

My reaction: If anyone asks, every item once belonged to “Skippy” from “Family Ties”.

Seeing as though we weren’t getting too many good tips from the web site, my fiancé and I decided to go ahead and go this sale alone. How hard could it be to run a garage sale?

The answer: not hard at all. It’s amazing how many people want to buy stuff. It doesn’t matter what it is, as long as they can talk you down a dollar or two, they’ll buy it.

Gone was plate with a crack in it…gone was the half empty Tab can…gone was…my grandma? Maybe I should have priced her at more than ten bucks. I’d never seen my mom so angry.

But yeah, it was a good time. We made money and got rid of a lot of stuff that’s only use now was being in the way. It actually got to the point that we were dragging MORE stuff that we could actually probably put to good use now (say like…I don’t know…toilet paper?) out of the house just so we could try to sell it. People were going buying crazy, dammit!

But for all of you who will have their own garage sales someday…may I offer you these tips:

-People realize that you don’t want this stuff anymore. Therefore, they realize that even though you’ve marked “$1” on the price tag, you’ll more than likely give it to them for twenty-five cents. Trust me, they’ll haggle any price.

-You might as well mark “this thing works” on every item in your sale because people will ask if everything you are selling works or not:

Woman: Does this thing work?

Me: The chair?

Woman: Yeah, this chair.

Me: Yeah…the chair works. You can sit in it like you would a chair.

Woman: Will you take ten cents for it?

Me: …yeah

-People don’t realize that it is a garage sale and that there isn’t necessarily some kind of stock room like you would find at a store. True story-one shopper actually asked me if we had a shirt that we were selling in a small. I offered to cut the bottom half off of it. She asked if I would knock ten cents off the price.

-You WILL feel guilty. Remember that family heirloom that your great-great-great grandpa passed down just so you could have it today? Yeah, you’ll feel bad when someone is strapping it to the roof of their car. Come to think of it…maybe that should have gone for more than a buck…

Great experience though. I highly recommend it. Do it now.

Oh but hey, before you do it one more thing that I learned- You will feel insulted when people don’t buy anything. Don’t take it personally. You’re throwing the stuff that doesn’t sell in their yard later anyway.

Copyright © 2007 Ray Tice
Please do not remove the copyright from this work.

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