A smashing success! Who knew!

Surprise surprise! Today’s estate sale was a complete success. It was really really really weird. We put up the signs and people just kept coming and coming and coming. I don’t think more than twenty minutes went by where people weren’t milling about buying things. At the busiest point there were twenty people in the living room at one time. It was a bit of a zoo actually.

Pots and pans and dusty picture frames flew out of here like they were going out of style. Towels and kids’ jeans were also hot items. Everybody bought things. You were right Lori, people will buy junk. My mom is reading this over my shoulder as I type and she is telling me it is not junk. I think she’s half right. Anyway, it was amazing. I think we made $300…which, sure, won’t pay any mortgage payments or anything but is a lot more than any of us expected for a garage sale on a THURSDAY. Who goes to garage sales and estate sales on Thursdays?!!

I guess a lot of people do.

I’m not sure if it was the very effective signs I made (cough cough) or the fact that estate sales are more popular because people like milling through dead people’s stuff or because there’s not much else to do out here in the sticks on a Thursday. But I think it had a lot to do with the location. While my Grandpa lived on a small cul-de-sac, the connecting street is quite a main thoroughfare. All the other sales we’ve held were at my mom’s house which really was out in the dusty sticks. I think we got a lot of traffic here because there just plain was a lot of traffic.

The lunch crowd was crazy. People dressed in their doctor’s-office smocks were buying up all sorts of things. I’m thinking a lot of family members are getting used teacups for Christmas this year. The sewing supplies went fast too. People are getting crafty when they are poor. Maybe this downturn in the economy was just what we needed to get back to basics.

Of course we only charged ten cents and five cents for many things so naturally they flew out of here. But it was good. So gooooood! Freeing! And don’t worry relatives, nothing antique or valuable was sold for five cents. The good stuff is still marked with market values and we’ll hold onto that until the end. We might even break out the old ebay passwords and put a little work into getting top dollar.

Or maybe I will be the one ebaying stuff since I was basically useless today. I refused to make change (I hate doing math on even the most rudimentary level). I know nothing about bartering and most of the time I just watched my kid and drank coffee. Which is very important of course. I also took pictures because I’m the official documenter of such things.

I think I herded a few people away from trying to buy things out of the kitchen (where we kept things that weren’t for sale) and maybe got my mom’s attention when somebody needed a price but other than that, I wasn’t much help. I didn’t stop that one person who stole the stopper out of a wine decanter though. Can you believe it? Someone stole a glass stopper. How rude. I guess some thievery is to be expected.

I’ll have to sick my daughter with the evil “Eba eyes” on them next time. Maybe I should make her in charge of greeting people and checking receipts. Just kidding. I’m keeping my daughter next to me. Stopper schmopper—I’m too afraid of someone trying to steal her!

The kids have actually been very very good. They had their own store set up in the back and made quite a killing selling happy-meal toys. Unfortunately, a lot of those toys are magically back in the house with them but all in all they did a good job being good kids. We took them (and us) out for pizza as a reward. That’s a tradition in our family: we always buy pizza with our earnings. We figure after we inhale that much dust and burn off that many calories lifting things and being on our feet all day, we deserve it. Usually that’s all we can afford with our earnings but this time there’s plenty for pizza and some. Which is really really cool.

If the rest of the sale days go as well as today went, I might have to reconsider my position on junk.

Nevermind, that’s just crazy talk.