Hope I Never Have to Bargain-Shop My Soul at A Garage Sale

I held a garage sale over the weekend. For two days I sold bargain lovers a bunch of my - uh - stuff to get it out of my hair and out of my closets. Which one of Murphy’s Laws says no matter how much you once paid for something, you ain’t gonna’ get didly squat for it now? Seems like every item I ever paid $1,000 or more for now goes for a measly $50 bucks or less. I Hope I never have to sell my soul that cheaply.

A borrowed picture of a garage sale

This was the third or fourth garage sale of my life and I keep swearing I’m never going to do it again. A garage sale is no job for a wimp. All day Wednesday I toiled at cleaning several years of accumulated cobwebs out of the nooks and crannies of my garage. Were all the spiders in the Pacific Northwest holed up at my house? They think this place is the Spidey Benevolent Mission or something? I felt so filthy and grossed out after destroying cobwebs I had to take a nice long shower. YUCK!

Besides acting like the Terminator Homewrecker, I also rearranged the shelves in the garage, pulling several items down to include in the sale. I swept the floor a bunch of times to make sure I got every last bit of dirt. I figured somebody who came to my garage to part with his or her hard-earned money wouldn’t want to do it at a ratty, cob-webby dirt hole. I know I wouldn’t.

Thursday I made sure the garage was spotless then started rounding up items to sell. Boy do you find out fast how frivolous you were blowing your hard-earned paycheck on things you once thought you had to have but now can live without. Of course, a lot of the stuff you don’t need any more - especially electronic gadgets - have been replaced by smaller, cheaper, better products: my old laptop computer that ran on Windows XP; my expensive Nikon 35 mm camera that has been replaced by a more compact, less expensive digital; my stereo components with BIG three-way speakers that now don’t even sound as good as music played through my tiny computer speakers.

I spent all of Thursday, pricing, setting items up to display them in a way that would say, “Buy Me! Buy Me!” At the end of the day I was so exhausted I took several ibuprofens, fell into bed at 8 p.m. and dropped right off to sleep.

Friday morning I was up at the crack of dawn to put the finishing touches on my sale displays. After two quick cups of coffee I trotted out to where our neighborhood road connected to a major cross-street and planted signs. By 7 a.m. I was sitting at a card table with a pocketful of coin and currency and prepared for the onslaught. Previously, when I held a garage sale people showed up before I was prepared. Only one couple did that this time, then the traffic died until about 9 o’clock and I was afraid I might not do much business. But if you hold a garage sale they will come, and by 10 o’clock, people were driving up in a steady stream.

Sam, of course, thought he had to greet every person who came to our sale. He sucked up to all of them for a pat on the head and by the end of the day I was wishing I had a whole kennel full of Sams to sell - I could have made a lot more money!

Alas! I did not make as much money as I’d hoped. On Saturday I only sold 25 cents worth of stuff the first couple of hours. Fortunately, the afternoon was better. Saturday night I was almost too pooped to care about money. But I have to admit, since Kathleen didn’t help out that much, I went to bed thinking I shouldn’t have to share the money I made with her. It seemed fair to me that I should keep it all.