report on yard sale, take 2
Jul. 20th, 2014 09:09 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
chhotiiYesterday was the 10th anniversary of the closing of our purchase of this house. Just fitting, then, that I would spend the day dealing with the accumulation of crap that buying such a large house would facilitate.
Yesterday was the second yard sale. It wasn't as good as the first yard sale, because fewer friends and members of our chosen communities were around. Nearly everyone is away, or sick, or perhaps tired of it all. I had a few, very heroic helpers: Hobbit came over the night before to move big things around; Persis and![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
marmota were there starting from the night before until things wrapped up; and at clean-up time, Josh and Walter and koshmom's husband carried things to and fro. Other than Spar and company, Alex L. with daughter, and Walter's family, no friends showed up to shop. Lots of the general public showed up to shop, though. We had a steady stream of customers.
Fortunatelypersis dealt with most of the interaction with the annoying yard-sale-attendee segment of the public. There were the hagglers (OMG the hagglers); the people who were loudly disappointed that they thing they wanted wasn't for sale; the guy looking at the stereo going "where are the speakers that go with this?" and being very annoyed that there weren't speakers attached, despite our trying to explain that you could attach any speakers you want (of which there were many many at the yard sale); the people asking nosy questions; the lady who got very loudly annoyed because she thought she had lost her keys in the yard sale (turns out she had dropped them in her car).
So, not fun this time; but about 2/3 of a mortgage payment gained, which is again pretty good money for a yard sale. More importantly, lots of stuff exited the house. Here's before and after pictures of the dining room:
Not that all this stuff is gone, though. There are leftovers. After several hours of offering the stuff for sale on the yard, and helpers had taken all the stuff that they either took a fancy to or wanted to take charge of trying to sell, and the small amount of books and clothing had gone into the Got Books donation box and the donation box on the porch respectively, and I re-considered deciding to keep a few items... There was still lots of stuff in the yard. So I did a quick and dirty triage of the remaining stuff; stuff that I still think can be sold for some money went back into the garage (neatly laid out, rather than in a big pile this time) and everything else went to the curb. The curb has a big sign that says FREE and has been advertised as free yard sale leftovers on Craigslist, and thus there has been a small but steady trickle of vultures coming to pick over the stuff. The line-up of free stuff on the curb has been thinning out. Looks like I will still have a big job of bagging that stuff up and putting it into the appropriate spot for garbage collection, though. The stuff in the garage, I should take pictures and advertise; somebody want some of this stuff, I know. And, in the end, the remainder is neatly accessible for the Vietnam Vets donations pick-up guy.
Yesterday was the second yard sale. It wasn't as good as the first yard sale, because fewer friends and members of our chosen communities were around. Nearly everyone is away, or sick, or perhaps tired of it all. I had a few, very heroic helpers: Hobbit came over the night before to move big things around; Persis and
marmota were there starting from the night before until things wrapped up; and at clean-up time, Josh and Walter and koshmom's husband carried things to and fro. Other than Spar and company, Alex L. with daughter, and Walter's family, no friends showed up to shop. Lots of the general public showed up to shop, though. We had a steady stream of customers. Fortunately
persis dealt with most of the interaction with the annoying yard-sale-attendee segment of the public. There were the hagglers (OMG the hagglers); the people who were loudly disappointed that they thing they wanted wasn't for sale; the guy looking at the stereo going "where are the speakers that go with this?" and being very annoyed that there weren't speakers attached, despite our trying to explain that you could attach any speakers you want (of which there were many many at the yard sale); the people asking nosy questions; the lady who got very loudly annoyed because she thought she had lost her keys in the yard sale (turns out she had dropped them in her car). So, not fun this time; but about 2/3 of a mortgage payment gained, which is again pretty good money for a yard sale. More importantly, lots of stuff exited the house. Here's before and after pictures of the dining room:
Not that all this stuff is gone, though. There are leftovers. After several hours of offering the stuff for sale on the yard, and helpers had taken all the stuff that they either took a fancy to or wanted to take charge of trying to sell, and the small amount of books and clothing had gone into the Got Books donation box and the donation box on the porch respectively, and I re-considered deciding to keep a few items... There was still lots of stuff in the yard. So I did a quick and dirty triage of the remaining stuff; stuff that I still think can be sold for some money went back into the garage (neatly laid out, rather than in a big pile this time) and everything else went to the curb. The curb has a big sign that says FREE and has been advertised as free yard sale leftovers on Craigslist, and thus there has been a small but steady trickle of vultures coming to pick over the stuff. The line-up of free stuff on the curb has been thinning out. Looks like I will still have a big job of bagging that stuff up and putting it into the appropriate spot for garbage collection, though. The stuff in the garage, I should take pictures and advertise; somebody want some of this stuff, I know. And, in the end, the remainder is neatly accessible for the Vietnam Vets donations pick-up guy.
