Tales of Garage Sales - Day 1

Today was the first day of our garage sale. It turned out to be a nice sunny morning - a little breezy, but very nice. I didn't keep track of the number of people - but I would estimate it to be around 50. My friend, Tracy was here with me all morning - that was nice to have someone to talk to in between sales and to have her hold down the fort while I took Katie to and from school. (Although Katie would have rather stayed home at the sale.)

I had to put up our signs last night - my mega signs. I took six BIG pieces of cardboard, painted them white, then painted SALE with our hours and an arrow. I glued them together so I had 3 double sided signs. Then I used packaging tape and taped them to great big garden stakes and hammered them into the ground on 3 nearby corners of busy roads. (Yes, the arrows pointed the right way.) For one corner I was going to ask permission from the owner of the nearby house - the other corner already had signs on it. I decided against it and just put my signs with the others. His yard still had a Norm Coleman sign in it. That's a die hard I'll just stay away from.

It's so funny to watch the things that sell right away - and the things that don't seem to go. They seldom turn out to be what you thought they would be. The second woman who visited this morning bought some of Katie's clothes. I had a sweat suit out of hers - jacket/pants - that swishy material. I swear it was the most ugly thing I had seen. I got it in a box of clothes I bought off of eBay when Katie was 2. I don't think I ever put the whole thing on her. Of course - that was almost the first thing to be sold. Now there are some other 2t/3t stuff that is SOOOOO adorable, almost brand new....has that sold yet? Nope. And no, my prices are all pretty low. :)

Things I'm glad to be rid of? That oak garbage can. I had gotten it about 9 years ago from a retired IBM-er in Rochester. I knew him through the bank and he made furniture out of his home. Loved it at first, but was SO heavy, and the wood soaked up smells like you wouldn't believe. So for $5, it's making someone else happy. ;)

Glad to see our toddler bath seat go - got $5 out of that. It's just hard to store because of the bulkiness. Will's workbench is now with another little boy...Will never really got too into it, and it'll make room for some type of a train table later this summer.

Of course there are many things that are harder to see go - Katie's favorite dresses when she was smaller, some first baby toys, even her most recent pair of sneakers. But they'll circle around and hopefully become favorites of others. 90% of this stuff was pre-owned by others before we came into it too. Everything has a story.

And speaking of pre-owned items, the former owner of our house stopped by as well. He bought some clothes for his 2 year old daughter. He said that he missed our trees. He had planted like 16 trees on the property while he lived here. He asked if he could take a walk around and look at them. Sure - knock yourself out. Didn't have the heart to tell him that we wanted to take 4-5 of those trees OUT!

A little dark - but you get the idea.

That blur is Will. He tired himself out running all over. Note cumbersome garbage can by Will's workbench.

Clothes as far as the eye can see....oh yeah, and some Christmas stuff.