Since we eventually want to move out of our little house on the prairie, my roommate suggested having a garage sale. Now I don’t want to be, but I am the type of person that clings onto an object well past the sell-by date. When I looked over at my pile of “future art projects” last week, I had two epiphanies: 1) though I could probably do something really cool with these styrofoam pads and box of seriously old school computer paper (the kind with the perforated hole-y tabs on the side that we used to make accordions with!), the likelihood of me actually doing this is statistically insignificant, and 2) my god, that corner of our room sure looks all landfill-like. Okay, so I wasn’t super enthused to begin with, but I began to start seriously clearing out things, and actually getting enthusiastic about it. Maybe I don’t need two recorders that I don’t play! I can surely pare that down to one.
This is the first garage sale I’ve ever thrown, really, and the first time I was able to encounter the serious garage sale goers. I mean, I knew they existed, but I never get up early enough on Saturdays to really witness this phenomenon. One guy showed up while we were still setting up, around 7:20 or so, and immediately bought a toolbox, which was probably the most worthwhile item there, as people kept asking about it later. What, none of our other junk was enticing enough? No one wants a yellowed cordless phone?
At around 8:20 or so, things were going swimmingly and there had been quite a stream of people flooding in and pawing around our crap, even purchasing some of it!, when this irate old woman waddled up to me. “Where yer VHS tapes at?”
Oh, shoot. My roommate was in charge of that, since most of them were his, but having partied the night before until two, he was a bit slow in getting some of his stuff together. “Sorry about that ma’am,” and I explained that my roommate was just bringing them down.
“I thought this thing started at eight!”
“Yes, ma’am, it did. Um, there’s some other stuff you could look at while you wait – ”
“I DROVE A REALLY LONG WAY TO GET THESE VHS TAPES. WHY PUT THEM IN YOUR AD, GIRL, IF YOU AIN’T GONNA HAVE ‘EM?”
“One second!” I bolted inside, and ran up the stairs. “Andy, some crazy lady wants your VHS tapes…”
“WHERE’S EVERYBODY AT?!” I heard behind me. She had followed me inside. I helped Andy grab as many VHS tapes as we could find and threw them into a laundry basket, running downstairs – “Here they are,” with the woman furiously waddling after us. She glanced at a couple of them for a few seconds and left, disgusted. Uhh…okay. Maybe she was just looking for this one particular VHS and got angry with us for wasting her no-doubt precious time?
VHS lady was the worst, but there was another lady who came up to me with a bunch of assorted paring knives and a measuring cup. “How much you want for these?” she asked. They weren’t priced and they weren’t mine, so I said, “uhh, hmm, how bout $2 for the lot?”
“You’ve got to be kidding me!” she said, acting incredibly insulted and offended. “Uh, fine, take it for $1,” and she did, but seriously lady? If you think something is over priced, at a garage sale, you don’t have to be quite so rude about it. Pfft.
My roommates also weren’t very experienced at running garage sales. While rearranging some items (the OCD part of me was VERY annoyed at having my artfully arranged displays ruined by filthy careless paws), I overheard Eli saying really loudly to some of our friends, “yeah, whatever we don’t sell today we’ll just take to the Freecycle thing tomorrow.” Within hearing range of a potential customer who was looking through some clothes. Doh! E said later that he just wanted to get rid of stuff and didn’t care so much about the money, but then why go to the whole trouble of having a garage sale?
In addition to the angry, snippy people – who I still don’t understand, if you are mad why do you have to yell at us? why can’t you just go to the other umpteen garage sales down the street? – there were quite a few characters, such as the hilarious old crusty guy who roamed over from across the street and bought our Half-Baked VHS for fifty cents. Andy impulsively offered to sell him the rest of the basket of VHS tapes for $2 (at this point there were probably thirty tapes left). “I have to go ask my wife,” said the guy as he shuffled off. Uh, okay. “Enjoy the movie!” we yelled.
And then there was the most adorable old man who lingered for awhile and pored over our CDs, reading the titles aloud: “Oooutkast: Stank-ooh-neeah!” “El Guapo – hey, they used to call me that!” and so forth. We loaded him with free VHS tapes and books and whatever else would fit into his bag. See, garage sale goers – simply having a pleasant sunny disposition will likely get you better deals than, say, scaring the bejeezus out of the sellers.
We ended up with a bit of profit, not a whole lot – I imagine we would have made tons more had we sat down, cataloged and photographed every item to sell on eBay, or something – but at least we have slightly less junk weighing us down!
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