My First Garage Sale!

Portland, Or: June 26-27, 2015

I’m on a roll!

Before selling the Greyt Escape, I had to empty it completely.  That’s a little bit like moving a another whole household into my already not very big home.  So, things are a bit cluttered.  Time to get rid of the excess.  I’ve never done a garage sale, but I jumped at the chance to participate in a neighborhood sale (for $7, the association provides signs, publicity, and put my house on the garage sale map).  There were about 50 sales going on in my neighborhood, over 135 (!) in a nearby neighborhood.

Luckily, I enlisted an experienced garage sale friend to help me out.  She had lots of tips on set up, tagging and strategies.  It would have been very chaotic (and lonely) without her help!

Of course, it HAD to be the hottest weekend of the year (expected to break records)

The first day was very, very hot.  We started setting up at 5:30 am to beat the heat.  Buyers started showing up exactly at 7am (when we had advertised our start).  The day was very busy but mostly a lot of fun.  Some good natured haggling, none of the nightmare stories I’ve heard about aggressive professionals looking for bargains that they plan to resell.  It was pretty easy to tell the pro’s but they were all very polite.

A ton of stuff sold - so I figured it was worth the sunburn and exhaustion!

A friend's easy-up was a godsend in providing some shade!

Partway through the second day, we were getting goofy.

The second day was a lot slower - but thankfully, not quite as hot.  But between the heat and not selling as much, we decided to cancel the 3rd day.

Crazed bunny killer wielding a super-sharp cleaver (all 3 items fortunately sold separately shortly afterwards)