Yard sale

The big yard sale was Saturday morning. At 5am there were thunderstorms, and it was still raining at 8am, which messed with our plan of starting the setup bright and early for an organized 9am opening. Instead, we had to wait until 8am to decide if we were going to have the sale at all. We decided to go for it, but it meant a late opening (more like 10:30), which, if you know yard sales, is Not How It's Done. Oh well. We couldn't set up in the rain.

Kathryn and Mike provided the yard, which was far preferable to our driveway, but it meant I had to schlep everything over from a block away. It took three carloads, plus another two people-only trips for Mike and I to carry the couch and the desk by hand. It was an incredibly physical and busy day. I was frenetically hauling and unpacking and moving and helping and yelling out prices all morning. (It was just me, because Dale had the kids.) It got hot. Everything happened very fast, because I could hardly get stuff out of the bags fast enough for the people who wanted to look at it. That's good right? We did a decent business. I got rid of a lot of stuff, which was my number-one priority -- I think about one carload. And I think I took in about $100, which is not bad either, for a late start.

One woman was crazy about my clothes (the ones that are now a little bit too big for me), and was totally thrilled to get herself an entire new wardrobe for 50c apiece; she bought at least half of what I put out. Another woman was incredibly excited about my spice racks, which I gave her for $4 -- she said "Do you KNOW how much the stores charge for these things?" Yes, and I don't care, I just want to get rid of it. One of the first things to go was Dale's drum throne; a hippy kind of Takoma Park elderly gentleman looked sincerely moved by the opportunity to acquire it. And then there was the young pregnant spanish-speaking couple who came by at 2pm, when we had thought the business day was over, and bought Kathryn and Mike's crib, and then were wide-eyed when I gave them six grocery bags of Aaron's baby clothes. Saved me hauling it down to the thrift store.

We did not manage to unload our big items, so I'm Freecycling them.

The bake sale was highly popular. In Steve and Mary Margaret's beautiful kitchen, I had made chocolate-chip bourbon nut blondies, sand tarts, and World Peace cookies (so named because they say if everyone in the world had one, contentment would reign on the earth).