Garage Sales Aren't For Wimps

By definition junk means to me: used stuff, in good condition, that one person no longer wants but another person has been looking for at a good price.

I’ve always been an avid believer in donating my used stuff to a charitable establishment that could put the money to good use. Since I had gotten my fair use out of the objects, I saw no reason to try to sell them in hopes of reclaiming some of the money I spent. So when my friend asked me to host a multi-family garage sale with her I very strongly said, “No thank you. It’s not worth my time.”

But she wasn’t about to give up that easily. Her reasoning: “Your husband is unemployed and you are traveling across four states to start a new life and hopefully find him employment. You need every bit of cash you can muster up!”

Two weeks later, as I was once again explaining how my junk was going to help a needy family somewhere, my two children turned to me and said, “Mom, right now we’re needy. Daddy needs a job and we need the money to help us move.”

“Okay, Okay,” I reluctantly said. “We’ll have a garage sale. But I don’t have to like it.”

We scoured the house for large ticket items that we didn’t want to lug to our new home. We scoured the house for items that we “just had to have” but never put to use. And we scoured the house for items that we used so much we couldn’t stand to look at them again. Five car loads later, we were having our very first Wisconsin garage sale. And you know what happened? I priced the items, pulled up a chair next to my junk, and people watched. Four hours later, I hadn’t sold one single thing.

That’s when my friend came up to me and said, “You’re scaring the customers. Notice how I keep busy pricing and organizing? Notice how I don’t watch the customers but am available to answer questions and take money? You need to move your chairs over there and stop staring at them as they walk in the yard.”

“I’m so not cut out for this,” I thought to myself. But I did as she requested and two hours later I had actually sold a few big ticketed items. After 8 hours we still had lots of stuff left, so we decided to host another garage sale the following week. Except this time, we would hold it on the busiest garage sale day of the week—Thursday.

We put up signs at every bulletin board in town, we posted signs on street corners, and we placed an ad in the local paper. We even bribed the kids. We would give them a $5 commission on each item sold at ticketed price! You know what happened? Eight hours later we sold all our big ticketed items and donated the small ticketed items to charity.

When I counted the money, I ecstatically said to my husband, “We made $160 today!” To which he replied, “So what’s that? Less than 1/8 of what we paid for the stuff?” I just had to chuckl

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