The Garage Sale Diaries

Hello everyone,
First! Let’s hear a big round of applause for Sir Knight because he has survived these last three weeks of getting ready for my Garage Sale. (After our last sale two years ago - he vowed it would be the last, but some vows are meant to be broken. Right?) I know some of you may think three weeks is a long time to get ready. I do know some people who just give the garage a quick sweep and start putting the stuff right out for the sale as it sat in the basement or the shed or wherever. But I am meticulous - I plan for everything and I try to get everything in good order and repair. Everything that is to be sold has been washed - line dried (if its made from material) or washed and towel dried so there is no streaking or spots. Broken items that are still usable are repaired to look as good as new.

Plus the garage has to have a though cleaning so any and all unfinished projects needed to be finished up to make room in the garage . Thus my dryad tree was finished and our storage room in the basement got a wonderful new large closet for our out of season clothes. Lumber was then sorted through - good usable pieces stored neatly against one wall of the garage - all Sir Knights tools given a though brooming and then wiped down before they were rearranged to provide as much walking room as possible. Shelves and tables brought down from the attic and a few other items put up in the attic for storage. Old sheet which were washed and freshened up - strung around over tools and such so nobody would question whether they were for sale or not. Then the tables were set up and we could finally start pricing items and setting up our display.

Sir Knight thought I had him set up too many tables till we really got into it - now he knows we really don’t have enough and so we have to stack stuff on top of each other ( I really don’t like that ) but the garage is only so big and we have lots and lots of stuff. I even use light plastic shelf units on top of the tables to make use of the air space and still we are full to capacity.

My son and his family brought a few things over - but realistically his stuff would probably fit on one of the mid size card tables. Like he said not worth having a sale of his own for.

Where does all the stuff come from I keep asking myself - but I know - in my younger days I was a real hoarder. If anyone offered me something, any thing for free I took it - cuz you never know it just may come in handy. I must also confess I love nothing more than to drive around the city during clean up week - picking through what others are throwing out for neat finds. We also go to auctions and if something isn’t selling and it goes down to 50 cents I find my hand flying up (automatically, mind you) to bid on it (Sir Knight Looks at me in total exasperation with that “What are you going to do with that“ look on his face). Some of its pretty and I make room for it among my décor and some is just not me. Also the auctions like to jumble a lot of stuff into one box and if you want one thing out of the box you just bought yourself a big box of miscellaneous stuff. Now if I had a resale store of some sort this may work out to be advantageous but I don’t - so it doesn’t - and all it does is accumulate. Of course I am not the only pack rat in the Family - Sir Knight works at our local high school and when a teacher or student throw away perfectly good stuff he brings it home to me - figuring I can use it for a craft project or something. And we have used quite a bit of the items he has brought home but not enough.

By Sat. night I know I will be totally exhausted - but - hopefully it will be worth all the hassle; and then what’s left will go on to the Goodwill.

And we have a slightly less cluttered house for a year or so. Or maybe a month or two. LOL Yea!!!!!!!!!

Hugs,
Penny