Garage Sale

We had our first garage sale yesterday on Blackberry Hill. We didn't advertise in the paper, it was one of those spur-of-the-moment, "we need to get rid of this stuff" decisions. The kids wanted to make some money and they decided to do most of the work. Sisterwho did the planning; she considers herself a professional garage-saler after spending so many weekends with Grandma and I have to admit, she knows her stuff!

The day before the sale, they cleaned out the barn, fashioned tables out of plywood, hauled boxes out of the shed and the basement and set everything up. Dh and I told them to price everything cheap; the idea was to get rid of things we don't want while recycling it by keeping it out of a landfill.

Since we are out in the country on a dirt road, we didn't know how many people would show up. Ds19, who is very artistic, prepared 24 great-looking signs indicating the sale would be TH/FRI and we placed them far and wide to direct people to our home. When we arrived home from putting up the signs at 8 pm the day before the sale, there was a truck pulling out of our lane-someone had already stopped to shop!

At 6:30 am on Thursday as we were eating breakfast, our first customer arrived. The kids hurriedly got dressed, inhaled their breakfast and went to attend the sale. From that point on, it was a constant stream of people. The kids met many of the people who live in this area and heard stories from older folks about the people who built our house (Mennonites). We sold a wooden sign that said "ROMANCE" and the man who bought it was born in Romance, MO. And not a person who stopped didn't comment on the views from the top of our mountain. The kids really seemed to enjoy talking to everyone and learning more about this area. Oh, I mustn't forget, a couple of people informed us about the bears and mountain lions that had been spotted in these parts-YIKES!

By 1:30, most of what we had was sold, excepting a few books and misc. items. We decided to forego the sale on Friday and went to take down the signs. We have never had such a good sale, even when we lived in the middle of the city!