Everything’s $.25 unless marked – Our Garbage Sale

Hah! You didn’t think you were getting away without a post about the annual Lindquist garage sale did you? What’s that? You’d rather hear about my failures to get my daughter to sleep in a big girl bed…well too bad. You’re stuck reading about useless items we sold for a dime until I can find a way to spin Faith’s ability to fall out of 1-foot tall bed and wander the halls half asleep into a positive light. That’s what PR people do. Now you know.

Anyway, the garage sale. Many of you remember the original sale pre-Faith and the sequel were quite successful. But just like any trilogy, the third installment wasn’t as big of a money maker. We still made $300 (between two families) and had fun doing it, but if it weren’t for my mom’s hoarding abilities (the woman owns four cheese graters) we would’ve been paying someone to haul our junk from our garage instead of holding a sale. Without her “treasures” there’s just not enough to justify pricing all that cra gently used stuff.

As always, the funny stories are what make the garage sale worthwhile. This year’s winners are:

These hideous ceramic dogs with hair. The night before the sale, my Aunt Kris, cousin Mandy and I were pricing items when we pulled one of these out of a box. We all lost it. When I pulled out the companion, we really thought we die of laughter. I got the bright idea to save them for a Christmas gag gift and set them aside. Faith found them in the garage one day and hasn’t let go of them since. One is Mommy and the other is Daddy. Daddy’s head keeps falling off, so I’m pretty sure my daughter will end up in therapy someday. Guess the joke’s on me.

When cleaning out one of our closets, I came across Rob’s artwork from high school. Now, my husband is very talented. See picture one. But picture two….now I’m certain Faith will need therapy. I had priced the items for $1 or so, honestly because I wanted to meet the person who would buy #2, but then had a change of heart. I’d hate for someone to make a cool million selling that sucker on ebay when it can be mine, all mine.

This one isn’t exactly garage sale related, but about 5 minutes into the start of our sale, Rob was walking around in the yard, when he suddenly groaned and announced, “Ugh, I stepped in poop.” My reaction: “Whose poop was it?” Really, Nicole? My only defense is that it was early.

Because I have no shame, I’ll list another doozy of a comment made by yours truly. Some dudes came up to the check-out table without looking at anything we had to offer and asked if we had any tools for sale. I responded, “No, but we do have some tiles.” (In my defense, change a couple of vowels around there and you’re in business. Also, tool people like to DIY. They might’ve wanted the tiles. However, they did not…this time.)

There was one item that a lady couldn’t figure out the use for. I told her it was a necklace holder…she thought it might be a tie rack. (Who really cares if it’s 25 cents?) After she left, my mom informed me that it was the top of a broken cupcake stand. Ahhh, now I see it. We were looking at it upside down.

This one is short and sweet, but Auntie Kris had about four board games with no pieces. Not missing pieces. No pieces. I told her those should be recycled, but she put them in the free pile. And someone took them! People are weird.

Kris also tried to sell one shoe. The girl was devastated when I couldn’t locate the other one. I can just see the ad for the garage sale on Craigslist: baby clothes, furniture and three right shoes.

I was grateful that my mom and dad were there, along with Kris to watch Faith if need be. It turns out though, she was our best customer, almost like a plant shopper advertising how much kids would like the items. Good thing she doesn’t make an allowance yet, or she would’ve blown it on all Mandy’s old stuffed animals.

in case you forgot what she looked like 🙂

 As per the usual, items went half price around 1. When we were desperate to close down at about 1:55, my mom had the best idea ever. $5 for everything you can fit into a good size box. Since most items were marked a quarter, we were just charging a dime when they went half price, aka it would’ve taken 50 items to make that worth it. The first family took us up on the offer. Little did they know they’d been had by my marketing genius mom, the original PR pro. 

As for the title of this post, that was my mom’s strategy when she held her first and only garage sale in the late 90s. At the time, I thought she was cheating herself out of money. Now I know better.