What a day!

Today, we held our big garage sale. This was a long time coming, and the actual event was an experience to remember (in the vein of a bad car crash!).

Okay, so it wasn’t quite that bad, but we sure attracted some odd folks. My brother, Charlie, and his wife, Trisha, held a garage sale of their own a few weeks ago and warned us that this would happen. They were right!

Even so, this needed to be done. We held the garage sale at what was my parents’ house (my Mom died earlier this year, and my Dad has been gone for six years now). We’re going to be moving there eventually, but first we have to clear it out so we can renovate it. Since we have a house of our own, we decided the smart move would be to do the construction at the new house before selling our current one. After all, why live through the mess if we can avoid it?

Okay, back to today’s sale. We took some things from here (“here” being our current home, since that’s where I’m typing this) and added to the many things we had to get out of my Mom’s house. It’s amazing how much there was to sell.

Really, we weren’t looking to make money on this stuff. It just didn’t feel right to throw things out when they could find a new life in someone else’s home. Of course, there was a ton of stuff we did throw out. Over the past several weeks, we’ve taken “contractor” trash bags (these are huge, heavy weight plastic trash bags we get at Home Depot) to my Mom’s house and dragged out literally dozens of these bags full of trash. Also, family members took many important items, from pictures to furniture.

For all of that, after weeks of cleaning the house out, we were left with things that weren’t of use to us but could be of use to someone else. My old desk, the bunk beds I shared with my younger brother when we were kids, various fans, lamps, pots and pans, items collected from trips to other parts of the world, and so on.

Well, we got an early start, or so we thought, getting there by 8am. What I quickly learned is that 8am isn’t early for the garage sale crowd. We couldn’t even get everything outside before they were swarming. It helps that the house is near a big street, so I only had to hang out a couple of signs on the main street and they began to swarm.

I must admit that some of the people were very nice. Some were a little odd, and others… well, what is it with people? We were selling things for prices that were just above giving them away. Still, people needed to haggle.

One item we dragged over from this house was a large halogen floor lamp. It was nearly new, worked perfectly and was tagged by us at a whopping five dollars. So this strange fellow asks if it works—-fair question, so we plugged it in to show him. Then he wanted to know if it had three setting levels. Marc explained that, in fact, it had two.

This wingnut then questioned Marc, arguing that most such lamps had three levels. His point? No idea, as this one has two. We didn’t build it, and we can’t do anything about it, but the man was troubled. Or he pretended to be.

So did he buy the lamp? Yes, but he needed to haggle, because five dollars was just too much to spend. Um, okay, whatever. He wanted to pay three dollars. Whatever, you cheap weasel, just take the lamp and hit the road. Maybe that was his point in being troubled by the lack of a third setting.

Anyhow, we got a lot of stuff sold, and that’s good. It needed to go somewhere other than the dump. Sadly, some of the items will wind up in the dump. Others will get picked over when we put them at the curb for the town to pick up, because there’s another subculture that loves to find things sitting (free!) at the curb. This I’ve seen here when we’ve put items out for pickup.

Really, the day was quite productive. We were happy to see so many things go happily on their way. Also, we had a visit from an old friend of my Mom’s, a lovely lady named Connie, of whom Marc and I are quite fond.

We also had a visit from my brother, Charlie, and his wife and son, Owen. Owen got some free toys from the collection we had on sale. That, of course, is a great thing.

At the end of the day, we had a visit from Patrick and Greg. I had text-messaged them about the garage sale, but I didn’t know if they’d be able to stop by. Of course, by that hour, we were grimy and sweaty. So it’s not like we were at our best (I hope I didn't reek too seriously!). Even so, we got to show them the “before” version of the house we’ll soon be renovating. More importantly, it’s wonderful when good friends stop by. So, thanks boys!

Add to this a meeting with our general contractor, a meeting with the central air conditioning contractor, and a visit from a moving company that took furniture up to my brother Al's house in Chappaqua, and it truly can be counted as a full and productive (if unusual) day!