In light of the yard sale (that I swore I would never have again) that I’m having tomorrow morning, I thought I would take a few moments to tell you why I am not fond of yard sales. I don’t mind going to yard sales. It’s having them that I so detest. Here are a few reasons why:
1. The God-awful start time.
When I was a kid and forced to go yard-saling (I know that is somehow a verb) with my mother, most of them didn’t start until 9 am. You could get there by 10 am and still have your pick of some good stuff. Now you HAVE to start by 7am. And just because you say you start at 7am doesn’t mean you aren’t going to have those dreaded “early birds” knocking on your door at 6:30 am. Just in case, I posted the ad this way:
YARD SALE: 7am to 12pm (no early birds – we’re not morning people)
2. Trying to set up the yard sale while people start picking through your boxes.
Now who would do that? See number one. People, please. It’s nothing THAT good.
3. The drive-bys.
If you’ve ever had a yard sale, you know what I’m talking about. They slowly inch past your house in their SUVs stuffed to the gills with their morning treasure glaring intently at whatever is laid out on the driveway. Then suddenly, they come to some realization that it’s not even worth their time to stop and look. And I stare back at them as if to say, I hope the item of your dreams is sitting here for sale for 50 cents but you’ll never even know it because you’re just driving by.
4. Pricing the stuff.
I don’t mind the actual act of pricing. I can assign a price to anything. More importantly, I can assign a value. My yard sales are probably the only ones you’ll ever attend where you’ll hear the hostess saying “what’s it gonna take to get you into this cowboy hat today?” I can usually read how high or low someone is willing to go. But you sometimes have to quote a price on the spot and then the very interested party suddenly decides that 50 cents is just not worth it for a beautiful crystal vase. How about 25 cents? My desperate pleas go unnoticed. I haven’t sold it and now I’ve humiliated myself.
Side story: I once had old towels for sale for 25 cents a piece. I had a woman pick up 10 towels and say “I’ll give you $7 for all of these.” I could have corrected her and perhaps saved her some money but thought that I just might embarrass her with my logic. Or my math. So I cheerfully accepted her offer.
5. The aftermath.
What do you do with the stuff you didn’t sell? Take it back in the house? Mais, non! That defeats the purpose. You don’t have a yard sale to make tons of money. You have it to get rid of stuff. You put it in the car and you take it to the nearest charity (mine, by the way, is Retails Thrift Shop which sells items to raise money for a low cost spay/neuter program). But you have to make decisions about things. I can sell a lousy TV for $5 but if it doesn’t sell, how can I just give it away? It’s worth more as a tax deduction. Still, I guess I want to know it’s going to have a good home.
The fun part? I always meet some interesting people and inevitably help someone find that dream item they’ve been looking for.
7 comments
This was hilarious. I've only had ONE yard sale and I've been saying yes to every charity that has called since.
My condo association is having a yard sale in June. After your tips here… I'm thinking that I'll just skip town or something. Especially so I don't have to deal with the traffic of the drive by-ers. 🙂
Maybe you will come in contact with someone so interesting they will give you a good blog post topic. I'm not a fan of yard sales either. Good luck with yours! I hope you sell most of your stuff.
Sounds like fun – I've only ever had one yard sale, when I was little, and it was a dreadful experience, but I have faith that yours will rise up and be awesome.
Oh my … you ARE somewhat of a kindred spirit, aren't you?
I detest yard sales. We are preparing for one here because we are overrun with massive amounts of crap … I mean treasures yet to be found. I am so not looking forward to it.
Once, I hosted a yard sale for my Mom. There was a “surprise box” for $2. It had four really cool glasses and a couple of other glassware items in it. A woman came and wanted only the 4 glasses. She asked me the price. I told her it was $2 for the box. She proceeded to throw a canippy fit all over the driveway about how she was paying for the other items she didn't want (Yes – I know I sank to her level) I kicked off the property. At that moment, I would have ground them to dust under my feet rather than let her have them.
Yes, I can be a child… in my defense, I was only 22 at the time – so I kinda was.
Yard sales definitely bring out the worst in people. I learned a new technique on Saturday. The first yard salers of the morning will ask “do you have change for $100?” Seemed like a ploy to just say “oh, I don't have change. I'll just have to give it to you for free.” Everytime I said no, they managed to find the money somewhere.
Oh my goodness, I need to remember your signage for the next yard sale I get sucked into. Except mine would start at 8:30… 'cause we're REALLY not morning people!