Saturday morning, hubby and I were up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed to begin our garage sale. We had decluttered, dejunked and purged our house of 95% of all the things in our home (we lost energy doing my closet and figured that it was good enough to stop). And we figured that about three-fourths of our stuff was good enough to sell at a garage sale.
Friday night, we were moving stuff around and putting up signs. It was a late night and tempers were short. Saturday morning, we got up before 5:00 a.m. to put up the finishing touches. I posted a listing on Craigslist, Oodle and other places for the garage sale and with the signs, I figured I advertised enough.
The garage sale was supposed to start at 7:00 but we started early. We had people there by 6:15 a.m. Now, hubby and I have done garage sales before and knew the deal. Early birds are the "swoopers" - the folks that own thrift stores, etc. that buy up cheap at the garage sales and re-sell for a profit. We generally hate selling to the swoopers but we just wanted our stuff gone this time. We even had a couple of cars for sale.
Within 2 hours, we have sold enough to make $200. We could have made more, but I made the prices ridiculously low. DVDs went for $2 per DVD or $5 for 3. VHS tapes were 50 cents a tape. Clothing was 25 cents a piece. Shoes were fifty cents a pair. And since San Diego is so close to Tijuana, we had the folks from TJ buying up everything.
By the end of the day, we made $500. A charity came by right after the garage sale to pick up all the leftovers and take it down to an orphanage in TJ. We hired a guy to haul the trash to the dump. The only things that are left are some large pieces of furniture and our cars that I'll have to Craigslist. I'm hoping that by the time the furniture sells, we'll have made another $400 or so. A couple from TJ is coming by to buy one of the cars for $2,000.
The money is nice but it's so much nicer to see that the house is so organized, streamlined and clean. We have one last load of trash to be hauled to the dump after we break down the shed by our garage and we have a few boxes of old filing that need to be take to Goodwill to be shredded and a few old electronic things to be recycled at Goodwill. Otherwise, my life is no longer chaotic.
Now, DF, DSD and Pikko don't have to listen to me kvetch about how disorganized my house is.