Garage Sales
I’m traveling with the fam until Wednesday, so I don’t know how much blogging I’ll be able to squeeze in over the next couple of days, but at least I don’t have to go to my personal trainer until Friday. That, my friends, is a good thing.
You know what’s not a good thing? A garage sale.
We had a garage sale about three years ago, and we put in hours and hours of effort to net about 50 bucks. I swore on the grave of Abraham Lincoln that I would never have another garage sale.
Well, with apologies to Abe, we had another garage sale this past Saturday. And for the life of me, I don’t understand why.
We live on a cul-de-sac, and we had a huge communal sale with everyone else on the block. So we stayed up sorting through crap and putting meaningless price labels on everything, which is just a starting point for hagglers.
Cheap, cheap, weenie hagglers.
I mean, come on, people. If a children’s book is marked at 50 cents, are you really making the deal of the century by offering a quarter for them? Would it kill you to cough up the full two bits? When you read the thing to your kidlets, do you think they’re going to be impressed with your miserly business savvy?
We did better on this sale than we did on the last one. We probably took in about a hundred bucks. Which is about half of the tax deduction we would have gotten if we’d just hauled all the crap down to the D.I. (That’s Deseret Industries, the Mormon version of Goodwill, for those of you outside of Zion.)
It’s not that we lacked customers. Cheapos from all across the Wasatch Front swarmed over our collection of detritus, and they walked away with plenty of broken toys, ancient electronics, and farm implements of some kind. What always cracked me up was the old guys who came around with specific requests.
“Do you have any antique photography equipment, coins, or jewelry?” one treasure-hunter asked.
“No, but we have a Little People Playset and a cracked HP Printer with no power cord!” I answered back.
I didn’t make the sale.
Mrs. Cornell had much more fun than I did, and at one point, she said, “This is what we’re going to do when we retire – spend the whole weekend rummaging through garage sales!”
I dearly love Mrs. Cornell. My golden years will be very lonely without her.
You know what’s not a good thing? A garage sale.
We had a garage sale about three years ago, and we put in hours and hours of effort to net about 50 bucks. I swore on the grave of Abraham Lincoln that I would never have another garage sale.
Well, with apologies to Abe, we had another garage sale this past Saturday. And for the life of me, I don’t understand why.
We live on a cul-de-sac, and we had a huge communal sale with everyone else on the block. So we stayed up sorting through crap and putting meaningless price labels on everything, which is just a starting point for hagglers.
Cheap, cheap, weenie hagglers.
I mean, come on, people. If a children’s book is marked at 50 cents, are you really making the deal of the century by offering a quarter for them? Would it kill you to cough up the full two bits? When you read the thing to your kidlets, do you think they’re going to be impressed with your miserly business savvy?
We did better on this sale than we did on the last one. We probably took in about a hundred bucks. Which is about half of the tax deduction we would have gotten if we’d just hauled all the crap down to the D.I. (That’s Deseret Industries, the Mormon version of Goodwill, for those of you outside of Zion.)
It’s not that we lacked customers. Cheapos from all across the Wasatch Front swarmed over our collection of detritus, and they walked away with plenty of broken toys, ancient electronics, and farm implements of some kind. What always cracked me up was the old guys who came around with specific requests.
“Do you have any antique photography equipment, coins, or jewelry?” one treasure-hunter asked.
“No, but we have a Little People Playset and a cracked HP Printer with no power cord!” I answered back.
I didn’t make the sale.
Mrs. Cornell had much more fun than I did, and at one point, she said, “This is what we’re going to do when we retire – spend the whole weekend rummaging through garage sales!”
I dearly love Mrs. Cornell. My golden years will be very lonely without her.
posted by Elder Samuel Bennett | 7:46 AM
3 Comments:
I have a friend who garage sales every weekend, and another friend whose husband incessantly buys from freecycle. Everything in their house looks like it's from a garage sale or from freecycle. Which it probably is. It depresses their spouses. Just say no to garage sales.
My parents tried one about 10 years ago. The only thing they sold was MY full size air hockey table. I didn't have space for it at my apartment at the time, and my Dad declared it fair game. It took a long time for me to forgive him for that. Other than the air hockey table they sold nothing. The people would haggle and my mother would say no. A real battle of wills. Nothing worse than have a group of old Yankees rummaging though your stuff. For those non-New England natives an “Old Yankee” is what we call the eccentric, cheap, cranky and Protestant old timers in these parts. Oh, and a lot of them have the bluest of blue blood and are unbelievably wealthy.
All the junk is still in the house (with the price tags on).
They wanted me to sell it on e-Bay but I refused to sell anything that was worth less then $50. Hence nothing.
Garage sales originated in the twisted mind of Lucifer before the foundation of the the world as a cause of insanity and tension and a way to break up families. They are evil, pure and simple.
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