The Garage Sale that was and the Garage Sale that wasn't

As everyone knows, we're moving, in 18 days to be exact. Since we are moving across several states I thought it was necessary to hire real, official movers. But real, official movers don't come cheap and they charge by the pound. I have a lot of stuff=a lot of pounds=a lot of money. So I decided it was necessary to clean house and have the Mother of all Garage Sales.

We live in a neighborhood that really likes to control things. One of these things is when you can have a garage or yard sale. You are limited to 2 days a year. I thought it was the first Saturday of May and the first Saturday of October. But I live in a neighborhood with over 1000 homes (my house is Lot 1256) and I live in the back. Your traffic gets drastically cut by the salers stopping at the beginning of the neighborhood so I decided to be proactive and place an ad in the paper for last Saturday. It read:

Big Moving Sale

May 3, 8-12

New applicances, Designer Bedding, Decos and Lamps

Baby Items, Musical Instr.

(and then there were specific instructions how to get to our house)

This ad cost me $65 and ran both Friday and Saturday. Last Saturday morning I got up at 5:30 to finish setting the sale up and looked out the doors from 7:00 on and nothing. No one. I opened the doors at 8:00 and NO ONE. I finally shut the doors at 8:50 and decided to go to Julia's volleyball game. I couldn't believe it! NO ONE!

It turned out that last Saturday was not the Saturday of our neighborhood sale, it is the second Saturday. This time I decided an ad was obviously a waste of money and planned to put out signs.

This morning I got up at 6:30 and started taking things out in the yard/driveway at 6:50 and I already had my first customer. Things never slowed down after that. I never even got my signs out. I had a 2 car garage literally completely full of stuff -- I had to move part of it out in the driveway so people could get in. In fact, all the regular garage stuff is in my dining room at this moment to make room for the garage sale items. By the time I closed the garage doors at noon, most of my garage was empty and I was $1011 richer!!! Its the best garage sale I ever had.

So I have learned from this experience-- don't try to plan ahead, just let it happen.

Uh, yeah, wouldn't my mother be proud...