Man alive, can I ever work a yard sale. Everyone is saying I need some sort of job that relates to this. I convinced people to buy things they weren’t even considering, negotiated my ASS off, and even was able to (politely) say Hell to the No! to this group of people who would flood sections, negotiate and backtalk, and try to basically scam us – they hosed my friend Sarah before they got to me.

Sarah generously hosted yesterday’s yard sale extravaganza at her house. I have spent the past two weeks purging our home like a madwoman. Our house is pretty neat and clean. There’s a place for everything, and we don’t even have any piles of crap or overstuffed cabinets and drawer. But still, darloads of stuff – more than I ever imagined we owned – have gone out to the door to Sarah’s garage over the past couple of weeks.

All in all, I made about $400, but more importantly, a LOT of stuff went away.

We had a box of free stuff in the front, to try to entice people further. It was full of beer coozies, half-used notepads, and all the other junk you can’t put a price on, really. I will admit that after an hour or so of intense selling, I was tossing trash into it whenever I walked by. I think my favorite part of the day was when someone took everything in it – box and all.

The worst part was that the cops took down our signage. We advertised in the paper and on craigslist, as well, but Sarah made some really great signs and I know they were pulling people in – customers even complimented us on them!

We did get the early birds everyone was talking about. Mostly people looking for jewelry – I had a modest display that was a last-minute purge and it turned out to be one of my biggest money-makers. We also got our fair share of gold scammers – have you heard about these people? Gold is going for like, $800 bucks an ounce, so people with rigged weight scales are preying of garage salers, etc., to melt it down.

They were not so fun. After the one who harassed me the most was long gone (Me, joking: “There’s some sterling and semi-precious, but I tend to keep the real stuff for myself”) Creepy Gold Guy: “Why don’t you sell me the real stuff? I’ll wait here if you want to go get it.” Me: “That is not going to happen.”), I finished setting up my jewelry, looked down, and found $25 cash that had to be his – it was none of my friends’. We had no way to reach him, and he didn’t return for it all day long. Sarah and I split it – karma kash.

We did NOT have that last minute rush everyone says you’ll get – extreme bargain hunters looking for extreme bargains before all the leftover garage sale stuff gets packed up and taken to the trash or charity. Still – we went from a garage full of stuff to a ping pong table about 3/4 covered in boxes which Sarah is calling to have picked up by a charity as soon as they can.

All in all, a good day.

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