The second load has been delivered to the Salvation Army store in Adrian. Today
a friend is stopping to pick up a generous pile of stuff for the Rollin Baptist
Church auction in October.
Although a few treasures are still left, I can now walk through the garage,
vowing with every step, "never again."
That "never again" has been said before. In fact I believe in this column I said
I would never endure the pains of another garage sale. So I lied.
You know how it goes. Things begin to pile up. You go to the grocery store for a
box and begin to fill it and shove it into the corner of the garage next to the
box of unsold merchandise from the last sale. Then there's a second box and
more until the makeshift warehouse has the promise of raking in several hundred
dollars. Wouldn't that be nice to help with the winter taxes or a plane ticket?
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I don't know who has winter taxes of $138 or knows where to get a plane ticket
for that price. That was my take on the two-day 2006 sale. Being a
businesswoman, I suppose I should deduct the cost of the advertisement and the
signs, leaving me with a round $130.
As my neighbor said, and I have to agree, at least you got rid of stuff. Think
of it that way. Being unwilling to accept any blame for such failure, I prefer
to believe it was the season and the road construction. By school time, I
suppose people have been to enough garage sales.
A week before my signs went up, the whole city of Hudson, Mich., was on
garage-sale time. I didn't bother going for fear I would buy something. Perhaps
if I had, it would have discouraged me from having a sale.
The construction on this road has been an ongoing project. It was a paved road
until this summer when the trees were cut down across the road, then the
pavement was dug up, and now giant machines run back forth on the dirt road
with enough force to rattle my windows. It's frightening.
Is it possible customers got this far, read the no-through-traffic sign, and
turned around?
You don't have to attend a sale, or to have one, to be reminded of how wasteful
Americans are.
Just driving by a garage sale you can see tables loaded with clothing and more
hanging on a line. The amazing fact about putting clothing in a sale is that
after you have finally decided to get rid of something, it often doesn't sell
anyway.
That's when it really should be donated to a charitable organization. Let it go.
I keep thinking about the lovely lavender floral housecoat in my sale. A woman
asked how much I wanted for it as she held the robe up to her. When I said $3,
she put it back.
There was one happy sale. Just before I closed the sale about 3 p.m. to go to a
party across the lake, I gave a pitch about the 100 percent wool coat I
purchased in Scotland. I sold it for $20 and the buyer has promised a
photograph of her wearing the coat in a very exotic place. It will have to be a
cold place. Those Scottish wools are guaranteed to keep you toasty.
There was a serious shortage of men shoppers. Otherwise I might have sold the
two electric saws I found in a garage cupboard. I had the price so low one man
plugged them in, listened to them run like tops, and advised me to jack up the
price. So I did and they are still here.
If nothing else, garage sales are a good time to visit with neighbors you don't
see otherwise, and chatting may even prompt a recipe exchange.
Mary Alice Powell is a former Blade food editor. E-mail her at
mpowell@theblade.com
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