"One man's trash is another man's treasure."
I've recently become a garage-sale Pro. I received this distinction after being a part of 3 garage sales in 2 weeks. Here's how that worked out.
1. I held a garage sale for my own personal belongings. I did not want to put things in storage, so I decided to get rid of almost everything. (I do have about 20 boxes in storage right now, about half of which are school-related.) I told a few friends they could come by for an "early-bird" preview. A friend told a friend, who told a niece that was about to get an apartment for the first time. She called me and came over. She ended up buying almost all the furniture! It was a wonderful start. The day of the sale, a great majority of the other stuff sold as well.
2. My Sunday School class decided to host a garage sale as a fundraiser for my trip. So what I did not sell at my personal garage sale, we took over to the host's house. I was incredibly impressed at the amount of donations people from the church had brought over to their home. It completely filled a bedroom and the front living room. We ended up using the entire front lawn and car-port on the first day. The second day, everything fit under the car-port. What a successful garage sale!
3. The same weekend as the Sunday School garage sale, my grandmother decided to host another garage sale at the church where I grew up. This too was an amazingly successful garage sale. We had several people bring donations to the church. The church is located on a prominent street, so there were lots of people that stopped by to browse and generally everyone purchased something.
It was this particular garage sale that reminded me I live in West Texas. First, I've never seen anyone arrive at a garage sale on a tractor. Yes, tractor...like the kind you use to pick up the big round hay bales. He bought some CO2 canisters for a pellet gun, but was planning to use them in some kind of wine-bottle-opening-contraption. So a wine-drinking tractor-driving man visited my garage sale! How fun!
Second, a couple arrived on a motorcycle. How can you properly garage-sale on a motorcycle? The man got all excited about some zinc canning lids that were on one of the tables. He was calling people and checking out the lids individually...even counting to see how many there were. Then, he only wanted to pay .50 for them! Bizarre, but hey - it's a garage sale. This couple did only buy about three small items and then stowed them in the saddle bags of the motorcycle and drove off.
Third, toward the end of the garage sale, a young man rode by on his horse. He did not dismount, nor did he buy anything, but it was interesting anyway. He rode right up to the edge of the tables and just kind of gave it the once-over. I think he was just curious about what kind of junk was left. But I'll bet this never happens in the city!
All in all, it was a crazy, hard-working two weeks to get these garage sales off the ground. I am so thankful for all the help and all those who came to buy. The money raised put me within $500 of my goal. PTL!
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