My family started a garage sale today. It's been a lot of preparation work, which kind of sucks because really, who knows how much to charge for crap you no longer want? For an indecisive person, this is quite the chore. But the worst part is sitting there watching strangers sort through that junk determining whether 25 cents is too much to spend for something you once spent 25 bucks on. My favorite customers (using that term loosely) are the ones who slow down and gawk as they drive by the house but then before turning into the driveway, they seemingly suddenly change their mind and speed away right quick. Makes me wonder what the heck they saw in that glimpse to make them want to get the hell away as fast as possible. My mother's theory is they see our old Spanish-style couch and chair, circa 1970, which features a lovely yellow and red paisley-like upholstery. Lovely. Regardless, I'd say we had a pretty successful first day. It didn't seem extremely busy but it was pretty steady and we sold some big-ticket items. The weather was good, for the most part. It downpoured for about 3 minutes where we scrambled to protect some items (like the electric organ) but then the sun came out and proceeded to burn the hell out of me for the second half of the day. Yes, as someone who typically avoids long periods of exposure to the sun, I forgot to put on sunscreen and will probably be beet red tomorrow. I can already feel a little sting on my neck and upper legs. Well, I guess it saves me the trouble of having to put on self-tanner.
One thing that is not selling at all, despite assurances that such things are in high demand from garage sale afficianados my mother knows, is Christmas decorations. We go a little overboard at Christmastime and my mom decided to downsize a bit so we have quite a bit for sale. Well, this brought out the best comment of the day. One elderly couple browsed through our items and the wife remarked that we must be moving and that was why we had so many items for sale. Her husband joked that obviously we were moving to a place without Christmas since we were selling our decorations. Cute. Funny. And, perhaps you had to be there.
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Oh and I forgot to mention that we had a bidding war over our old kitchen table! It was quite exciting. It was an elderly woman who lives alone and who sadly said, "I'm too old to buy a new table" vs. this mean fake-British furniture dealer with her own lackey to pick up the furniture. You will all be glad to know that the elderly woman won.
I have another funny (or odd) story to share... This woman was eyeing one of my old, cute skirts. It's a denim miniskirt with buttons all up the front. She wondered if she could try it on. Obviously, since this is a garage sale, we have no dressing rooms. I suggested she just unbutton all the buttons and try it on over her very thin cotton workout shorts. She realized it would be okay to try it on outside the house and proceeded to pull down her shorts to put the skirt on! I was seriously shocked. I mean, I guess if she doesn't care then I shouldn't either but I just was shocked she would pull down her shorts to try on this silly skirt that she was paying $1 for.
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