We thought we’d make a few bucks for groceries. Empty out the closets, haul the most egregious dust-catchers out to the driveway, and watch the junk fly out the door and the dollars fly into our pockets.
So KJG made the long trip in from the White Tanks with a carful of valuable, priceless discards. Given the number of burglaries and break-ins we’ve had here in the neighborhood, I asked her to bring and display her doberman pinscher, the mellow but amazingly scary-looking Holly, who happens to enjoy the presence of Cassie the Corgi.
Shortly after the crack of dawn we stuck up our signs along the main drags bordering the neighborhood and planted more signs on the feeder streets directing the hordes of buyers to the site of the Big Sale. Before I could get back to the house, KJG was already entertaining buyers. This looked promising.
Promises, promises…
Those were the first of three or four rafts of lookers, one of whom was the neighbor across the street. Almost no one showed up.
It might have been that a 110-degree day was dawning. Or it might have been that not one dusky face appeared among the throngs of potential buyers. The reign of terror emanating from the nastiness that pervades Arizona politics has cleared out and frightened away the working-class Latino population who made up the majority of yard-sale shoppers here. Demographics in the tenements across the road have shifted from mostly poor-white and Hispanic to mostly poor-white and African American. Yard saling in these parts is a cultural thing, not much shared by the latter two groups.
Whatever. By the time it got hot enough to close up shop we each had sold almost nothing. I made $6; KJG made a few bucks more than that. We piled all the unsold merchandise (34 shirts, 5 pairs of pants, 3 sweaters, 2 skirts, 3 pairs of shorts, 1 dress, 12 glasses, 2 mugs, 2 picture rames, 3 seat cushions, 1 Hoover Floormate, 1 shark floor sweeper, assorted motorcycle parts and tools) into the Dog Chariot and carted it off to St. Vincent de Paul. Good-bye to all that!
Afterward, we went to lunch.
I made six bucks on the sale and paid ten bucks for a very nice small meal. Net profit: -$4.00.
Well heck, you and your friend cleared a lot of stuff out of your respective houses, right? As the Queen of Clean would say, “It’s a good thing.”
I don’t like having yard sales. Too much work and not enough profit. I am not in the Valley Fri-Sat-Sun but seems in past years there weren’t too many yard sales at this time of the year due to the heat. Folks aren’t driving around looking for them. Well, at least you got a bunch of stuff cleared out. A+ for effort! 🙂
Oh how disappointing! I blame the weather. However, I have never been motivated to host a garage sale. We usually just haul everything to the Salvation Army.
As the other commenter said, at least you got rid of some clutter, so just bask in your clean house!
Probably the heat was a major factor. But a great deal of it has to do with the disappearance of the primary market for yard sales in this part of town. Despite the heat, at this time of year people are shopping for school clothes. They drive up and down the streets in our neighborhood looking for yard sales. Normally you don’t even have to put out signs…the minute they see you dragging stuff out onto the driveway, they descend on you.
Agreed, yard sales are generally more trouble than they’re worth, unless you have a LOT of stuff. I cleared $300 on the sale of my mother’s effects…that was back in 1976, so you can imagine what that would be today. More recently a friend made many hundreds of dollars, between consigning her mom’s clothing to My Sister’s Closet and yard-saling the ton of stuff MSC wouldn’t take.
I figured I could get between $30 and $50 for my stuff. Normally I wouldn’t have been bothered, but just this minute I really need the money.
@ Everyday Tips: LOL! Well, I did free up about 35 coathangers. 🙂
In my experience unless you have a lot, and I mean alot of kid stuff, yard sales are too darned much work for no darned money, LOL. Im donating right and left and then selling on craigslits and ebay.