Yard Sale Aftermath

Lessons learned from having a yard sale:

1. Always check that cds/dvds/videocassettes/games are in their proper cases.
2. People prefer to look through clothes when they're organized by size.
3. A lot of people just come to look.
4. It doesn't seem to matter if you advertise.
5. People think that they can wait until late afternoon and then see if you'll give them something for free or at a way reduced price.
6. As a buyer, you should test items like strollers for all working parts before buying them, only to return them later, in the middle of the night, because the strap to buckle in the baby was supposedly broken (when I know for a fact that the strap was not broken).
7. Get tables to put EVERYTHING on. It will save older people from having to kneel down to look at books placed on a sheet.
8. The VA hospital appreciates donated books.
9. Older folks read a lot.
10. Setting up for a yard sale doesn't seem to take that long; it's the taking down and putting away of one that is the real challenge.

Re #1: A man came to the sale to view one of the aquariums, but he ended up buying approximately 4 Playstation 1 games we had for sale. Stupidly, I did not check to make sure the game disks were inside the plastic cases, and he emailed me on Monday to say that two of the games weren't in the cases. I managed to find one of them, and he came by to pick it up. I fear the other game is long gone, stuck inside the Playstation itself, which sold to someone else. I offered to give him his $2 back, but he said to keep it. As a buyer or seller, you should always check.

Re #6: Woke up today to find the umbrella stroller on the front steps, with a note pinned to it. DH came home last night at midnight, and we were up today at 7am, so somewhere between midnight and 7, the person who bought the stroller (who lives down the street) brought it all the way back to the house. Now, first of all, she bought it Saturday, for $5. No biggie, right? She even had her granddaughter (20 months) ride in it all the way back to their house. Today is Thursday--why wait until today to figure out it wasn't working? WTF? I would have given her the $5 back, but why leave it there with no explanation, other than the strap was broken? I looked at it, and it looked like it had either been torn, cut, or chewed through. The umbrella stroller has been in my car for about two years, hardly used in that whole time. As far as I knew, the strap was fine. So, I'm wondering if the granny put the other kid in the stroller, a small baby who could hardly hold his head up, and something happened. I hope not! Anyway, it was just weird.

We earned about $181. I was hoping to sell 90% of the stuff we cleared out, but it was more like 10%. What I thought would sell, like the baby clothing and baby stuff, did not sell. I had about 10 boxes of clothes, and only about 1 box sold. I guess people just didn't want to pay $1 a bag for practically brand-new stuff. (I started out at $5 a bag, but as the day wore on, I came down in price.)

What sold was weird stuff, like a few old cassette tapes from the 1980s that I no longer wanted. I couldn't get rid of the wok, the electric grill, some Hallowe'en stuff, stuffed animals, a box of free toys, &etc. The books sold well, however. I had over a hundred paperbacks and hardbacks, about five boxes worth, and I got rid of three boxes. My MIL suggested donating the rest to the VA hospital, so I boxed up the other two boxes and she said she'd take them to the VA. So at least they didn't have to go back in the house!

The aquariums didn't sell, not even the little ones. I guess that people can get them anywhere nowadays for free, so why buy one.

If I ever hold another yard sale, it will be during the citywide garage sale weekend. More people will come, most likely.

What cracked me up was all the people who said, "I'm getting ready to have a yard sale myself." Well, if they are having a yard sale, why buy more stuff that will probably just end up in their yard sale? Hehe.

The Daily Puppy

Check out the The Daily Puppy. They are sooooo adorable!

World Refugee Day

World Refugee Day is today. CNN has some in-depth coverage on its website, and Angelina Jolie is going to be on Anderson Cooper 360° to highlight the plight of refugees throughout the world.

My Trash Can Be Someone Else's Treasure

The ever-expanding mass of clutter in our house is now seeking new owners.

We decided to have a yard sale on June 24. This is our first-ever such sale. Both DH and I are packrats, although I am somewhat reformed, and I was always more packratty than he was. When we first moved into our 4-bedroom house, with full basement, I thought that we would never fill it up. However, clutter abhors a vacuum.

For starters, we have wedding gifts that haven't been used in 9 years (on July 5), and will never be used--like glasses, salad bowls, and canisters. We have kids' clothes that DD has outgrown, ages 0-5yrs, plus outgrown shoes and coats. We have toys, stuffed animals, two bouncy seats, a walker, a carseat--all outgrown. I have stacks and stacks of romances and mysteries that my mom keeps giving me to read. However, I usually just list them for sale on half.com. But since I haven't had a sale in about six months, they're going in the yard sale.

I have several purses, mostly Liz Claiborne, that I no longer need. I have candle holders, candles, never-used hand lotions, a dvd player, and several aquariums: 100-gal., 30-gal., 10-gal., and 1-gal. They're all going. We have a matching set of sofa covers that I used a couple of times but look brand-new. I plan to weed through my stationery supplies and my mass o' knick-knacks as well. DH has several boxes of football cards he's trying to get organized to sell.

DD will be running a lemonade stand--1 cup of lemonade and a homemade chocolate chip cookie for 10 cents. Last year, we went to a garage sale and the kids at that house were doing it. She thought that was a great idea.

Slowly but surely, we've been dragging stuff out onto the front porch, which is the staging area. (We are not dragging out the aquariums. If someone wants to buy one, THEY can drag it out!) The task is monumental. Although I have DD's clothes organized by size, they are not organized by outfit. I plan to get up early on Saturday to get everything set up. Maybe I am a perfectionist, but I know that when I go to garage sales, I am more likely to look at everything laid out nicely on a table or blanket, rather than dig through a box. The problem with organizing things like clothes is that I really can't do anything in advance.

We've kind of waited until the last minute to decide for sure what we're selling anyway. We decided we were going to have a sale back in May, and put the date on the calendar, but other than talk about what we might sell, we didn't drag much of it out into the staging area. :) Nothing like two procrastinating packrats!

Part of my (continuing) packrat problem is that when people give me stuff, I don't want to part with it. But as I saw on "Clean Sweep," it's not the object that's important. It's really the thought that counts, and the knick-knacks are holding me back. All the clutter is holding us back. DD's room is piled high with so many toys and books that she has no idea what to play with. Her closet is full of clothes that are too little.

It's time to move on, time to let go.

I told DH that when the sale is over and we see whatever we haven't sold, it's all going straight into the back of his truck to take to Goodwill or somewhere. It's not going back in the house (with the exception of books and any of his FB cards, because we can resell those).

I'm not expecting to make a ton of money, because mostly I just want to be rid of the stuff. The stuff is stifling me. Now, if only I could get my desk cleaned off...

When I'm 34....

Happy birthday to me!

No Smoking Allowed

This weekend, I stopped in at the local gas station to get gas (at $2.85 a gallon). I went up to the cash register and noticed an innocuous little box sitting on the counter. The items had names like Valiant, and I thought about the movie, which we had just rented and watched the week before. Then I looked closer.

Candy cigarettes have returned. Maybe they never really left the market. However, it has been years since I saw any for sale in this area (east central Illinois). It must have been in the late 1980s when I remember begging my mom to buy me some. Which she did, of course.

I did not have my daughter with me in the gas station that day; she was waiting out in the car. However, if she had been with me, I never would have allowed her to beg me to buy them. In our household, no one smokes and we generally think it's a nasty, disgusting habit. In fact, my grandfather-in-law is now suffering from emphysema--he cannot breathe without the aid of oxygen in little tanks he has to carry everywhere; he has had a stomach aneurysm repaired; and he has had a colostomy. Back in the 1980s, the year he quit smoking for good, he saved up enough money to buy a new truck and a camping trailer. Another elderly woman I knew needed oxygen as well, but she never gave up smoking. She'd smoke through the hole in the mask.

Candy cigarettes are candy, I know. Harmless fun. However, I think that some kids will be tempted to try real cigarettes because they played pretend with the fake ones. I was never tempted, but I can only recall that one time when my mom bought us the candy. The candy tasted like crap, by the way. We were a non-smoking household growing up, so it was probably more of a case of emulating my parents for why I never smoked, in addition to the fact that I think it's a disgusting habit.

Another disgusting thing I see quite often is employees who smoke right outside in front of the establishment. When I see the employees smoking away, it makes me want to go somewhere else. If employees need to smoke, employers should set a policy on where they can and cannot smoke on work property and during work hours. Go to your car. Don't stand in front of the door, or right next to the door, and expect me to walk around you. Don't stand there and gossip idly about other employees or your boss. Even if you are just a gas station employee, it's unprofessional and rude. I have actually refrained from going to places where employees are commonly seen smoking in front of the entrance.

Smokers can smoke if they want to--if you want to kill yourself, go right ahead. Just don't expect me to keep returning to your business if I have to walk past your noxious cloud to enter the building.

Wahoo

Blogger's back.

--finally.

10 Years Ago

Was it yesterday, Thursday, or was it Wednesday evening when I realized that it's been 10 years since I visited Europe in June 0f 1996?

The journal I wrote in on that trip, the one with the Paris Métro ticket design on the cover, has its first entry marked June 3, 1996, somewhere over the Atlantic Ocean. I was not yet 24 years old (my birthday would be later in the month). This journey would be the farthest I'd ever traveled away from my small Illinois town.

It was a Monday when I departed with the tour group--to visit five countries in ten days (England, France, Switzerland, [a small jaunt into Liechtenstein], Austria, and Germany). As I reread my journal of the trip, I see that we spent most of the time traveling on buses, getting from one place to another. And I mostly remember how HOT it was that week. The temperature was 90 degrees almost every day. I got a sunburn from sitting next to the window on the bus during an 8-hour drive from Dunkirk to Paris.

Yes, that Dunkirk, and all I wrote was that we disembarked there on the ferry from England. I wrote nothing about the people, the ambience, the real details. I basically reported what we did while on tour. But I can't blame myself for not being more descriptive in that journal. I was barely a year into keeping a journal, and by no means was I journaling daily (but I did manage to journal daily for the length of the trip). I suppose I thought that my pictures from that time would tell the real story.

A lot of my perceptions have faded. I don't remember the sounds, or how I felt, other than I was overwhelmed. I do remember that it seemed like EVERYONE smoked in Europe. I could hardly walk anywhere without being enveloped by a noxious cloud of cigarette smoke. It was also hot and crowded wherever we went. Seeing Versailles when it's 90 degrees outside and there's no shade is not very much fun. You're too hot to concentrate on the details. (I should have brought a hat!) I also remember feeling disoriented in directions during the whole trip. For some reason, east and west seemed mixed up.

Alas, I wrote down absolutely no details about the countryside we were traveling through. I do remember that the northern French countryside reminded all of us of home. I remember how I practiced my French on the shopkeeper in a touristy knick-knack shop near Versailles, and when I tried to ask for an empty glass in a café, but I forgot to say "empty." She brought me a full glass of Coke--with no ice.

People complained a lot on our trip. The hotels had no ice, no washcloths. Two people had encounters with pickpockets; one woman's wallet was stolen, but the other woman screamed and her attacker ran off. We were easy targets--loud, absentminded Americans.

Touring like that is exhausting. My ankles swelled up on the second day of the trip and I was often too tired to go out in the evenings or when we had free time. In Lausanne, it rained that night, and I walked with others down to Lake Geneva--it was a goodly hike back UPhill to the hotel. We were up early every morning and in bed late every night. Most of the time was spent traveling on the bus. If and when I ever return to Europe, it will be one country, or one city. Five countries is too many.

I enjoyed my trip, but I was glad to get back home. I missed the flatness of Illinois. I missed Diet Mt. Dew. I missed the way things are done here in the U.S. I missed my family and friends. It was worth it. If I never get to visit Europe again, at least I can say I saw the Mona Lisa, Neuschwanstein, the Tower of London, and my doppelganger in King Ludwig's Beauty Gallery.