July 23, 2014 at 2:10 p.m.
Finding new homes for their old junk (07/19/06)
Back in the Saddle
By By JACK RONALD-
There are three approaches to running a garage sale.
Some folks want to make money.
These are the people who have watched way too much “Antiques Roadshow” and cringe whenever someone finds out the 50-cent knick-knack they picked up at a yard sale is actually worth $50,000.
These are the folks who put pricetags on every single item and probably conduct some sort of computerized inventory control.
Some folks want to socialize.
These are the people — like a couple of good neighbors just down the street — who find that when you're retired and living alone a garage sale is a great way to meet new people.
They love having shoppers stop by for a visit, whether they buy anything or not. My guess is that they'll live longer and stave off Alzheimer's disease with this particular marketing strategy. Nothing keeps you young like a good conversation and meeting new people.
And some folks just want to get rid of the stuff that clutters their lives.
We fall into that last category.
These are people suffering with what I call TMC syndrome. TMC stands for “Too Much Crap.”
Too many old clothes, too many toys left over from when the kids were little, too many souvenirs from forgotten trips, simply too much crap.
You can recognize our tribe when we have a garage sale. We're the ones who price things low and applaud when the merchandise departs. If it shows up on “Antiques Roadshow” later, we can live with that. At least, in the interim, we might be able to find enough room to park the car.
Saturday was the big day at our house.
We'd organized the heck out of things, run a good ad in the newspaper, and hauled some of the bigger items out the night before.
But we were still up at 6 a.m. Saturday and sweating in the July heat to get things in order before our 8 a.m. opening.
The first shopper showed up at 7:20 a.m.
She seemed a little miffed and a little surprised when we said we weren't open and wouldn't sell anything before the posted opening time.
But she came back.
So did dozens of other shoppers.
If there are, indeed, three approaches to running a garage sale, there are at least a dozen approaches to shopping at them.
Saturday's event saw the casual types, the impulse buyers, the big lots inventory reduction specialists, the snoops, the hard bargainers, and more.
In the end, it was an enormous success.
And there were some nice moments.
An old dresser and some bookcases went to a couple of nice families. An Amish lady picked up a bunch of our canning jars and a child's game that I'm sure her bishop would approve of. A stack of 3-D puzzles went to the kids next door. And a pair of Super Soaker squirt guns went to a little girl who looked as if she couldn't wait to fill them up.
But trouble is, with any garage sale, you don't sell everything.
I kept waiting for some guy with a big truck who would offer $5 for the lot. It was his in a heartbeat. But he never showed.
Instead, on Sunday, we borrowed the company van and hauled what was left — way too much stuff — to Goodwill Industries in Muncie.
It was a nice feeling as we drove home, having purged ourselves and our household of all of that miscellany.
But next time, I'm going to suggest we skip the middle step and go to Goodwill in the first place. It's a lot less work.[[In-content Ad]]
Some folks want to make money.
These are the people who have watched way too much “Antiques Roadshow” and cringe whenever someone finds out the 50-cent knick-knack they picked up at a yard sale is actually worth $50,000.
These are the folks who put pricetags on every single item and probably conduct some sort of computerized inventory control.
Some folks want to socialize.
These are the people — like a couple of good neighbors just down the street — who find that when you're retired and living alone a garage sale is a great way to meet new people.
They love having shoppers stop by for a visit, whether they buy anything or not. My guess is that they'll live longer and stave off Alzheimer's disease with this particular marketing strategy. Nothing keeps you young like a good conversation and meeting new people.
And some folks just want to get rid of the stuff that clutters their lives.
We fall into that last category.
These are people suffering with what I call TMC syndrome. TMC stands for “Too Much Crap.”
Too many old clothes, too many toys left over from when the kids were little, too many souvenirs from forgotten trips, simply too much crap.
You can recognize our tribe when we have a garage sale. We're the ones who price things low and applaud when the merchandise departs. If it shows up on “Antiques Roadshow” later, we can live with that. At least, in the interim, we might be able to find enough room to park the car.
Saturday was the big day at our house.
We'd organized the heck out of things, run a good ad in the newspaper, and hauled some of the bigger items out the night before.
But we were still up at 6 a.m. Saturday and sweating in the July heat to get things in order before our 8 a.m. opening.
The first shopper showed up at 7:20 a.m.
She seemed a little miffed and a little surprised when we said we weren't open and wouldn't sell anything before the posted opening time.
But she came back.
So did dozens of other shoppers.
If there are, indeed, three approaches to running a garage sale, there are at least a dozen approaches to shopping at them.
Saturday's event saw the casual types, the impulse buyers, the big lots inventory reduction specialists, the snoops, the hard bargainers, and more.
In the end, it was an enormous success.
And there were some nice moments.
An old dresser and some bookcases went to a couple of nice families. An Amish lady picked up a bunch of our canning jars and a child's game that I'm sure her bishop would approve of. A stack of 3-D puzzles went to the kids next door. And a pair of Super Soaker squirt guns went to a little girl who looked as if she couldn't wait to fill them up.
But trouble is, with any garage sale, you don't sell everything.
I kept waiting for some guy with a big truck who would offer $5 for the lot. It was his in a heartbeat. But he never showed.
Instead, on Sunday, we borrowed the company van and hauled what was left — way too much stuff — to Goodwill Industries in Muncie.
It was a nice feeling as we drove home, having purged ourselves and our household of all of that miscellany.
But next time, I'm going to suggest we skip the middle step and go to Goodwill in the first place. It's a lot less work.[[In-content Ad]]
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