Hey Guys! Welcome my very first Guest Blogger! Jen Womack is my newest bestie! She's the one this blog was written about. I never told you that I didn't scare her off! She took a few weeks to reply to my text, but we are friends - like for real! Our littles are similar in ages, our sense of adventure and humor are in sync, and....importantly, she had enough junk in her garage to make my junk into enough to be a fabulous garage sale!
Here's her take:
I remember so clearly my first garage sale. It was summer,
and my sister and I were looking for ways to earn money. We picked weeds and
washed windows but, frankly, we had our eyes on a bigger payout. My mom agreed
to a garage sale as long as; one, we did all the work, and two, we absolutely
did not have it at our house. No problem! We enlisted a friend and had our
first multi-family sale. I remember the sorting, and pricing, and the thrill of
a sale. I remember haggling with strangers, but mostly, I recall the stack of
cash at the end.
Until this summer, these childhood yard sales were my only
point of reference. Perhaps because I associate said sales with such rosy
memories, two decades later, I jumped all over the invitation to combine my
unwanted things with a friend’s (Erin’s) in yet another ‘multi-family’garage
sale.
Now, I know this sounds a little heavy for a topic like
garage sales, but it was such an insightful weekend. I would never have guessed
two days of unloading my ‘junk’ on others could invoke such a range of
emotions. Here’s my take-away:
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1) Garage sales are a lot of work! As a kid, the
prep work was fun. It’s easy to price and sell something you didn’t pay for
yourself. It is also easy to sit around with friends and make signs when you
have no other obligations, namely 3 kids and a household to manage. This was so
different! The week prior to the big sale was manic and my kids watched a
month’s worth of cartoons and scavenged for many of their meals while I priced
items and strategized with Erin . I felt like a
bad mommy by the end of the week and was so happy when it finally began and we
could think and talk about something else.
2) Friday is THE garage sale day in Edmond , Oklahoma
3) Letting go of your baby’s things is all kinds of
hard. I had zero problems selling the plastic slide or turtle sandbox but was
surprised at the pain I felt selling some of the baby clothes and tiny
blankets. “Don’t you know,” I wanted to
say to the person talking me down a dollar, “that Avery wore that in her first
days home,” or that “Hunter took his first steps in that romper,” and so on.
But memories have no cash-value and I am no hoarder, so I let go….but, it hurt.
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4) Two hormonal women + too much caffeine and sugar
+ too little sleep = tears. We watched an expectant mother carefully shop the
cheapest used clothes for her firstborn and listened as another mom
explained how she wanted to come by after pay day and shop the leftovers. It’s
hard to put into words what made me want to cry. It’s not pity for them, or guilt
that I feel….we’re all just doing the best we can. It’s that, pay day never
enters my mind if the kids need new shoes, clothes, etc. This was a good
reminder to not take that for granted.
5) A thing is only worth what someone will pay for
it. I’ve heard this saying countless times but a garage sale is absolute proof.
I had people talk me down to scandalous prices. I lost count of how many times
someone tried to haggle for Erin ’s liter of
apple cider vinegar we were using as a bookend. One lady offered me a quarter
because, ‘it’s leaking a bit.’ We sold things I would never have guessed anyone
would want. And other, ‘nice’ things, just didn’t move ‘til we were willing to
almost give them away. I had a woman try to give me one dollar for a pair of
shoes I wanted two for with the excuse that they were a half size too big.
Worth and value are certainly in the eye of the beholder.
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6) Lastly, garage sales, like most things in life,
are better with a friend. Without Erin , I
would have made a few more trips to Goodwill and called it done. Instead, we
plowed through together, laughing and sweating, and made a great team. We began
our weekend with a shot of espresso and too many Krispy Kremes and ended it
drinking iced white wine through a straw (no judgment…it was good.) The de-cluttering
that took place in that weekend was downright therapeutic, but, for me, the
most exciting part was bellying up to Erin ’s
kitchen table and counting our stack of cash….we were giddy as little girls.
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-Jen
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