Sale-ing Along

I've been trying to organize and do a yard sale all summer, and finally got it together this weekend. I'm no stranger to doing yard sales. It seems I've never had much money, so anytime I wanted to go on a trip, or one of the kid's birthdays was coming up, or if I just wanted some extra money for a splurge, I've had a yard sale.

I remember doing one to finance a trip to L.A. to attend a La Leche League Conference.  Cam was only 2 and I saved and scrimped and sold anything that wasn't nailed down so that we could ride Amtrak to Anaheim and attend the conference with my best friend and her little girl. We had a wonderful time. It was money well spent.

Now that we're contemplating moving, I am really in the clean out and get rid of mode. I had a lot of extraneous day care toys to unload, as well as kitchen stuff that's piled up. Mike even went through the garage and I was pretty proud that he was actually getting rid of stuff. I know it wasn't easy for him because he's such an "I might need this someday" person!

I always find it funny that the things I expect people to go crazy over generally don't sell and the things I think no one could possibly want go first. It's just weird.

I once had a bunch of stuff donated to me for a yard sale and there was some ugly (to me) pottery pieces among the stuff. I marked it 50 cents each, and the day of the sale I had a couple ladies almost killing each other over it. Turns out it was very collectible McCoy pottery. One man's trash is another's treasure indeed!

This time I had a bunch of holiday decorations to sell that used to be my mom's. She would decorate her house for each holiday with adorable items. I wish I had the motivation to do that, but I don't, so I decided to sell it.

My favorite customers of the day were a young pregnant woman, her little 3ish year-old son, and her mother. They touched me because seventeen or so years ago it could've been me and my mom and my little Cam. The grandma bought one of my son's old toys for her grandson, and was thrilled to buy my mom's Thanksgiving turkey creamer and sugar bowl as well as a Thanksgiving table cloth and hot pads. It just really brought back fond memories of how my mom enjoyed buying stuff for me and the kids and how much fun we used to have on our outings together.

I also had another young woman with a toddler buy a couple of mom's Halloween decorations. She was very nice, and I found out that she's a blogger! So now I have a new blogging friend that I've actually met in the flesh. Fun!

It was a lot of work, but we had a successful sale. It's gratifying to me to see someone excited to take something home and it makes me feel good to know it's going to get used and appreciated rather than sit in a box for years on end. And the money is nice too!