Yard Sale Recap

I’ll be honest: I’m not a big yard sale person. Rummaging through other people’s junk doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t seem to have that eye for finding the treasure among the trash, and I would rather pay $5 for a new T-shirt at Old Navy than dig through a pile of musty old clothes from someone’s attic. And I’ve never held a yard sale myself mostly because I’ve never had enough stuff I wanted to get rid of.

But when my street organized a group yard sale I thought, what the heck? Now that we have kids our house is overflowing with stuff! Ironically, it’s not the toys and baby paraphernalia we wanted to sell. Rather, it’s things we never use -- like extra wineglasses, martini glasses, margarita glasses, champagne glasses (are you sensing a theme?).

You know, all that stuff you register for when you’re getting married and envisioning your life as one long dinner party. And then you have kids who mess around with the china cabinet while you’re changing the baby’s diaper and topple an entire shelf of vases, shattering glass everywhere. And you realize Target’s finest plasticware is a better match for your lifestyle.

So anyway, there we were bright and early on Saturday morning, setting up our goods. My husband and I were bitching about what to charge and whether or not he’d sufficiently cleaned up our old jogging stroller. The baby had been up since 4:30 a.m., we were out of coffee and milk, and I was wondering why this ever seemed like a good idea. Then there’s Miles, running around singing, “Yay, yay, yay! It’s a perfect day!” He could not BE more excited about the yard sale. Plus, he and his buddy Charlie were having a lemonade stand –- their first foray into sales.

Overall, it was a fun day and pretty successful. Sadly, I didn’t take a single picture because I was too busy running around. But I did learn some interesting lessons from our first yard sale:

• People are cheap. They’ll pay $10+ for a bottle of wine but won’t pay 50 cents for a Crate & Barrel wineglass? You can’t even buy a PLASTIC wineglass for that price!

• People are dumb. To attract passersby, my neighbor got some balloons that had “Garage Sale” printed on them. We’re sitting there in our front yard with all this stuff, no garage in sight, and a guy goes, “The sign says ‘garage sale.’ So is this it? Or is there more in the garage?”

• People are unpredictable. To my surprise, no one touched the still-boxed picture frames or the dishes (except for a couple martini glasses). The big sellers were my old junk jewelry, an old couch, some pregnancy books, and the jogging stroller (vastly underpriced at $10, but probably worth it because it was so dirty ;)

• Kids have short attention spans. After selling the first cup or two, the boys lost interest in their lemonade stand and ran off. But not before they’d eaten the merchandise, the baked goods for sale alongside the lemonade. They did like counting up their profits at the end, though.

TIPS O’ THE WEEK: I got some of these from PineappleBabble.com, who also lost her yard sale virginity this weekend! Price everything in increments of $0.25 with pre-printed stickers from Target or Staples. Have plenty of quarters and dollar bills for change. Provide plastic bags, newspaper, and/or bubble wrap for people to take home their purchases.