Friday and Saturday we held our garage sale. Even though we were very organized and posted on Craigslist & Nextdoor, we didn’t get as much traffic as we were hoping.
The very first thing to sell, however, was my old Kenwood Stereo I purchased for $400 twenty years ago.
It had it all (at the time) – dual cassette deck, 3-CD changer, and radio. The speakers were huge and sounded great (still do, actually) and it was in fantastic condition. But due to its size and how we listen to MP3s these days, it had been collecting dust in the garage for years. Imagine my surprise as the guy who bought it was putting it into his car and I felt this overwhelming sense of panic. I literally had to go inside to calm down – I thought I was going to vomit. I felt seriously bummed and overly emotional afterwards. I had no idea I had formed such a sentimental emotional attachment to it or I might have not sold it. I’ve tried to rationalize the feelings away with logic – it’s too big, I never use it, etc. but I still feel sad about it, although I’m sure that will get better over time. I don’t necessarily like having such a strong attachment to physical objects. Other than the blanket my grandmother knitted for me which I have slept with every night for the last 25 years, I didn’t think I’d feel such a loss without an item in my life. Oh well. I will never see it again (sob), so it’s best to try and get over it.
Anyway, shortly after that “traumatic” event Friday, my coworker called asking for help since our boss was off and he was being asked to do something he had never done before. Walking him through it over the phone wasn’t helping so I drove over to get it done since it’s less than ten minutes away and I really needed the distraction. I ended up working an hour so that will make my next paycheck a little higher which is nice.
Despite everyone telling us that Fridays are super slow and that Saturday would be much better, it really wasn’t. Overall we ended up making a little more on Saturday but not until 4 pm. We had shut down at 2 pm on Friday but extended the hours until 5 on Saturday in hopes we’d get more interest. When all was said and done we made a little over $100. I would have made more working an extra day at work so that’s not really worth my time. Plus we still have a bunch of stuff left that we’re going to donate and try to offload on Craigslist, including the stuff my dad asked us to sell for him that no one wanted.
One cute thing that happened was the neighbor across the street purchased a few old bookbags on Friday and her daughter (who I guess is around 12) came over Saturday with her friends and was wearing one of them. She also told us how much she loved it which was nice. It’s a mini bookbag I’ve had for over twenty years and really loved when I was younger. It was still in excellent shape because I take really good care of my things. Even one of the people who bought some stuff from us mentioned we had really nice stuff. I just wish it would have sold!
When I was lamenting on Facebook about the futility of having a garage sale one of my “friends” told me how it was because we should have had our sale in April and that when her organization had one they earned $1500. Um, how is that even helpful? I’m sure her organization had a lot more things for sale since multiple people contributed. I was so very tempted to “thank” her for her oh so helpful advice and let her know that I’ll just hop into my Delorean and go back in time to April to have my sale then. I am *this close* to unfriending her. Most of her comments are just irritating know-it-all things anyway and ain’t no one got time for that.
So will we ever have another garage sale? That would be a no. Even though the thing I dreaded most – people haggling – didn’t happen too much, I still didn’t enjoy it. Although this one lady got a steal on this purse I had that was brand new and sells for $79. I’ve been trying to sell it online for a year so I lowered the price to $25 for the garage sale. She wanted $15 even though I said $20. I gave in because a) I didn’t pay for it anyway and b) I just wanted it gone, but I’m kinda pissed about it nonetheless. And this is why I hate selling things and garage sales. Never again. I’d rather do Craigslist and sell stuff one at a time.