I always have mixed feelings about garage sales.  Or barn sales or yard sales….  you get the picture.

They are a lot of work.  Finding stuff, preparing it, toting it out, pricing and then sitting around for days on end.

If you’re super lucky, you’ll sell a lot of stuff and make a nice little stash of cash.

But usually, you end up swapping a bunch of stuff with the other attendees…  making a couple hundred bucks if you’re REAL lucky and wasting a good part of 3 or 4 days for a fairly little payoff.  Certainly not much profit because of the initial cost of acquiring the stuff you don’t want anymore.

Yard sales are good times to reflect on why in the heck you bought that fancy, expensive kitchen gadget that doesn’t perform as advertised or that purse that your friends found questionable and yet you HAD to buy…  or perhaps the stuff you bought double and triple of because you couldn’t find the original!  I always vow to be a better shopper after a sale.  Of course, I rarely pay attention to those vows… but still, I consider them for at least the length of the yard sale!

So, as you can imagine, one yard sale every 5 or 6 years is pretty much good for me.  In fact, the last time we had one, Jessy was about 10 years old!   So that means it’s been about oh 12 years since the last one!  I guess we were getting pretty ripe for one.

You might think I don’t like them, then…  but in reality, I do.  I enjoy the other aspects considerably!

It’s super great to get rid of a lot of clutter from your home.  I can’t believe how many carloads we brought over and I haven’t missed a single thing yet, over the weekend.  Imagine that.   And we just moved a year ago, so we had really cleaned up before we did, taking several boxes to Goodwill and some to the trash bin!  So the fact that we have cluttered up again so fast gives me reason to pause…  good and long!

I like that where you might be reluctant to GIVE your clutter away, there is something so much more desirable to SELL it for 25 cents and so you really pull out the stops on contributing to the sale box!  Yeah, that $7.50 you’ll make on the HUGE box of stuff really makes it all the different, don’t you think?  Ahem.  We are silly, aren’t we?

Naw, the things I like best are the time to sit around and visit with your friends and kids while you’re selling…

Swapping stories and laughing, being silly and teasing youngin’s, visiting with the neighbors that stop by and meeting old friends and relations as they scope out your piles of cast offs.  That is the real fun of a yard sale.

Eating hot dogs off the grill and donuts in the chilly morning as you wait for the rush of people at opening bell.

Mad dashes to move the “good stuff” inside when it threatens to rain.

Haggling and dealing with the visitors and the thrill of making a sweet deal on something you thought would be a good thing…

Seeing a kid get close to making the money they want for some NEW special item that might end up in the next garage sale cycle!

That’s what I like.

 

And I can’t complain.   So far my earnings have helped to pay the electric bill, bought three bales of hay, bought us a chicken net (really nice fishing net with rubber net instead of thin string!) and a neat little hand hoe for the garden…  two big balls of yard for knitting, and will pay for sheep shearing on Monday!  Not too shabby.  The girls are super excited, they have pocket money and bought some fancy game system off the neighbor boy as well as a few little goodies of their own they had to snap up.  And we’re going to give it a try next weekend as well, since it’s all set up nice in the barn and well, we’re gluttons for punishment, I suppose.

 

That gives us another week to walk around the house and barns and think… hmmm…. do I need that?  Can I sell it and make a buck?  I’m sure we’ll come up with another box or three of stuff to spice up the offerings.

Around here, it takes a little longer for folks to get the news that you’re starting up a sale barn that is going to run for 3 months.  Haha… trust me, there are people that have weekly barn sales.  I’ve fallen for those signs a few times and you get there and it’s been running since 1973.  They just can’t stop.  And then… they start buying up stuff from other sales and adding to their stuff.  It’s a sickness, I tell ya, a sickness!

But hopefully, we’ll be strong enough to stop after two weekends.  After all, in August there is a big huge miles long yard sale extravaganza that takes place on Highway 127, which we are like a mile off.  So, we have to start saving up stuff for that, you know.

 

 

Maggie sure has a knack for making nice big signs.  She’s getting better and better at it.  She wants to start a sign making business.  I do believe she would do a good job at it.  It’s her calling.  I think.

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