The great garage sale

Last Saturday I got talked into participating in a large garage sale event by a group of my neighbors. I am very good at keeping down the amount of stuff in my house so I usually don’t have a lot that needs to be gotten rid of. But I took a tour through my condo and my storage area and came up with a couple of boxes of books and household items I really don’t use that often and felt it was time they made a graceful exit.

At 7am on Saturday morning I loaded the car and off we went a few blocks to the neighbors to set up. In short order I was ready for the hoards who would be fighting over my precious offerings. For my neighbors it was quite a different story.

Out of their garages and basements came a never ending stream of broken down furniture and miscellaneous everythings. 99% of it was just plain junk. And not just their personal junk, but junk they have collected from others - stuff they found on the street, stuff they got when their tenants moved out and left it, stuff they inherited and even stuff they bought at other garage sales! It took them hours to drag all this out and set it up for sale.

By noon 95% of my stuff was gone, I had made my lunch money. When I make the decision that something is leaving my house, I become totally unattached to it and it no longer holds a specific dollar value to me - you want my used set of bath towels, they are yours for a buck or two.

So, by 2pm I was completely done and everything was gone. My neighbors would be hauling 95% of the same junk they brought out back into their garages and basements because they would not sell the old rusty sink for $20 instead of the $35 they had priced it at.

As I prepared to leave one of the neighbors asked if I would be back tomorrow to do it all over again and I was very happy to say I had nothing left to sell. I knew they simply couldn’t imagine how I managed that!