we spent the day having a big-ass yard garage today. this had been a long time coming, seeing as hmc and i have more things than any two people reasonably need, and yet live in an apartment spaciously designed for a frugal buddhist.
there are a lot of steps to prepare for a successful garage sale, most of them onerous. things like going through all of your stuff and picking out what you don’t really want anymore but is actually something that someone else might want. things like cleaning aforementioned items and making sure they look presentable and not like they had been stuffed up in some closet gathering dust for the past four years. things like hauling boxes labeled “yard sale” out of the storage space and replacing them with boxes labeled “not yard sale”.
regardless, we advertised in craigslist, we went out at 10pm the night before to put up signs, and we got up at 7am to get ready for the nutty bargain-seekers, despite going out to the false profit “bitterness inc.” anti-valentine’s day dance party the night before. man, nothing like trying to pawn off your crap on others while only having had four hours of sleep!
(hints for garage salers: yes, advertise in craigslist. list lots of big interesting items for cheap. things like dressers, butcher blocks, stereos, vcr’s, boomboxes, george foreman grills. put up signs. and open early and be ready! those serious salees will get there and try to cherry pick before you’re even open!)
all in all, however, i have to admit that the sale was a big success. we have significantly less items than we did before. it’s actually pretty fun meeting people and have them pick through your stuff and take it away for mere pennies on the dollar.
(another point for salers: you have to decide what your whole point in having a sale is: are you trying to make money, or are you trying to get rid of your crap? hopefully it’s get rid of crap, otherwise you should be ebaying or listing individually on craigslist. once you’ve decided just to get rid of it for cheap, everything’s easy from there, and you’re ready to deal and bargain your life away!)
things i thought would never sell, ever. (but did!):
i ended up meeting more neighbors in six hours than i have in the past eight years. plus some of the sales were pretty cool. my favorite was the dpt guy who came by and ended up buying that skateboard that i got for free back when i was working for sony. he wanted it because he had skated as a kid but gave it up when he grew up but wanted to take it up again. how cool is that? we liked selling caitlin’s old “clifford the dog” book to the kid who had the baby sister with the toy fire truck that was even bigger than she was. and selling the george foreman grill without a grease catcher to the girl who came over on muni just to buy it because she had broke her roommate’s george foreman grill the night before was perfect.
everybody plays, everybody wins!
we ended up making about $350, which was a bonus. and $48 of that is in singles. which will make a lot of strippers happy. A LOT.
Posted at February 11, 2006 7:13 PMComments are now closed for this entry. Thank you for playing.