World’s Most Embarrassing Garage Sale: Day One

Phew! The first day is over. One day down, one day to go. I’m covered from head to toe in dust. I feel like an old woman. But that’s good because I need a good workout these days so I can be prepared for climbing steps all day when I’m in Paris. I hefted boxes, hung 1,367 dresses, skirts and blouses, threw out fifty million old moldy boxes and chased the dogs around the yard a few times. They kept escaping from their special side yard. They wanted to be in the middle of it all.

Just like my six-foot-tall, willowy cousin who is only twelve year’s old!!! She is so going to be a supermodel by the time she’s fifteen. It’s funny to watch her be all beautiful and gangly at the same time. She has no clue where her arms and legs are going. She’s like a colt who just learned how to walk. She looks like she’s sixteen, she has a body to die for and she has a brain of… well a twelve year old (of course). So she wants to play tag and hide and go seek with all the other kids her age. She wants to run and jump through things that she can’t fit through. She almost knocked over a table of glasses and breakable dishes three times. We had several mishaps while she was running in and out of our make-shift clothes lines (which are just poles stuck through the rungs of two ladders). She knocked over my mom’s stereo, by tripping over the cord and almost killed my dad’s Sirius satellite receiver. She was like a bull in a china shop. Good thing our China shop was only worth pennies.

The truth is, we are just selling trash. All the crap we have for sale is soooo worthless! It’s dusty, it’s dirty, it’s old and if it’s supposed to work it doesn’t work. One guy wanted to know if a little pink fan worked. (I used to have an all pink bedroom when I was 14.) So we plugged it in and as he tried to turn the knob to turn it on, the knob turned to dust in his hand. A plastic electric fan turned to dust! What kind of conditions make an electrical fan turn to dust? My mom has been keeping every single thing since the beginning of time. I’m so glad I’m a purger instead of a pack ratter.

I even unpacked boxes of dirty underwear today. Dirty, holey old underwear! Who would ever buy dirty old underwear? I was so embarrassed in so many ways. After I finally went through every box of clothing and threw out everything that was stained, ripped or moldy I felt a lot better. It’s just horrible to know people are sorting through your stuff and they’re going to have to lift a pair of crusty jocky shorts to find some other treasure underneath.

Even with all the trash, we did manage to make $200. We would have made more but we started just giving things away. It took so much work to get everything out and cleaned that the thought of putting it all away again or loading up the truck 500 times to take it all to the dump gives me hives. I think by end of day tomorrow I’m going to pay people to take our junk.

Getting Ready for the Big Day

I’m so tired I don’t even think I’ll be able to finish this post and I still have to make my grand garage sale signs. I think I’m going to change the name of our garage sale from “the worlds largest garage sale” to “the world’s most embarrassing garage sale”. That oughtta drive in the traffic.

Seriously though, the sheer quantity of junk that has been stored at my parents house is very embarrassing! My mom has kept every unwanted thing since 1977 AND she has never said no to anyone dropping off their unwanted junk either (who me?). Not only do we have clothes so retro they are back in style again, we also have “vintage” too because she’s been given things from people who saved things from the 50’s! If it wasn’t all so old and musty and dusty and gross, I could make a killing on ebay.

That’s all I did all day today: unpack dusty old boxes that were rotted out on the bottom. When I blow my nose, brown snot comes out. I’m a human filter of dust. Even after my second shower, I feel like I need to be dipped in Shea Butter to get rid of the gritty dirty feeling. Apparently the shed my mom keeps the garage sale junk in leaks and the moisture ruined whatever was near the floor. Books, old knitted sweaters, clothes from my childhood… So many things that had so much potential but now are in a trash heap as big as my mom’s mobile home. Sometimes you just gotta let go.

And boy, are we letting go. I wish we were on that Clean Sweep show! All day long I was thinking, this would make such great tv. Thankfully I didn’t have too many arguments with my mom over getting rid of things. She did squirrel away a few of my old marker pens when I wasn’t looking. She has a weakness for office supplies. You should see her desk… but I digress.

Most of the junk is unpacked and I think we are finally ready for our big day tomorrow and Saturday. It was a perfect garage sale day today, too bad nobody shops garage sales on Thursdays. The sun was bright, the sky was blue, the orange blossoms are in bloom. It was a beautiful day to be outside… huffing mold spores, cobwebs and dust from three years running. We even had some fresh lemons that we could have squeezed into lemonade and sat sipping in the shade of my mom’s arbor…but we didn’t because we were way too busy unpacking dusty boxes. Maybe tomorrow. IF tomorrow turns out to be as nice as today.

It looks like it might rain tomorrow. Isn’t that just my luck? They say there is a 10 percent chance of rain and it did start getting windy and cold at about 6 tonight. I think I’m more worried about my cool poster board signs getting spotted with rain and wilting than I am about our garage sale getting rained out. I have such great plans for my signs. I think making garage sale signs is the best part.