One Woman's Junk

This past weekend we had a garage sale. Jay and I had gone through our junk and pulled out quite a bit of stuff to sell. It was quite an eclectic mix of stuff - plastic bowls, scuba gear, books, baskets, miscellaneous mother boards, a lawn mower, Jay's entire CD collection, and a more than slightly used crib mattress. Now you know they say that one man's junk is another man's treasure. I proved that point this weekend beyond the shadow of a doubt. As we were collecting things around the house, Jay kept saying, "Just throw that junk out." I assured him someone would buy that junk - and someone did. Someone with only two teeth and no bra. She spent an hour and a half rifling through Jay's CD's, my cookbooks, and our friend's electronics. She wanted to haggle with me over every single item she bought, too. Now if you are buying a chair that I want $100 for - feel free to try to dicker with me over the price. But when you want a pleather pocketbook from Target that I'm asking $2.00 for - you've got to have some major cajones to try to get me down to $1.00. But try she did. And she succeeded. I wasn't trying to get rich. I was just trying to get rid of some junk and make a few bucks - and get rid of her as quickly as possible.


Here's a selection of Jay's skinny clothes - i.e. the clothes he owned when we first met that he couldn't squeeze his right bicep into these days. We have an entire walk-in closet full of our entire wardrobes from 2004. Neither one of us could fit into a single item. We've totally porked out and plan to do something about it in the near future. But Jay (wisely?) decided he'll never be a 33 waist and a size M shirt again - so he dragged those items out to the garage and sold them. I still haven't given up hope and left most of my skinny clothes hanging in the closet to taunt me. And they do taunt me. I can't even open the door to that closet without wanting to hyperventilate.


Here's my buddy N again. He came to help me out since Jay was still in Charlottesville and I had baby girl to take care of. He was my "muscle" both mornings - helping people carry their purchases to their cars and watching the money while I ran inside for bottles and diapers. My sign didn't want to stand up in the yard, so he had to help with some repair work, too. Nice cigarette, N. Don't you know those things will kill you? A and N sold some of their stuff at our garage sale, too and made about $100. Of course, N had spent it at Wal Mart before the day was over.


And here's the butter bean hanging out in her stroller at the garage sale. Lots of our customers wanted to know how much I was charging for Lois. In the past week, since I've been a single parent, there have been a few times I wanted to leave her on the curb with a "free to a good home" sign stuck to her forehead. But on the whole, the bean is one GOOD baby. She aint for sale.


And here's the result of all of our hard work. We made a little less than $500 and took 2 car loads of junk to the Goodwill. Now we can pay for the rental truck that is going to take our stuff to Richmond this weekend. If I had played hard ball with that crazy woman who wanted to haggle over everything maybe we would have had enough for a McDonalds breakfast to boot.