Cobwebs

Every year, our neighborhood hosts a neighborhood-wide garage sale.  Each house puts up $2 for the ad to run in several local papers and, on the scheduled day, each puts their discarded treasures in the driveway.  Although we've lived in this neighborhood for almost 8 years, this is the first time we've been in town to participate.  And, boy, did we!

In this house, we have an attic.  When we first moved in, we did not have the necessary furniture to house all this stuff (comprised of a gazillion books, accumulated craft supplies, and crystal wedding presents) so it all went directly into the attic in the boxes in which it moved here.  Since then, the attic has served as the equivalent to a junk drawer: every gewgaw has been tossed up the stairs until we finally have the house settled with the necessary furniture.

Of course, that strategy presented some issues when My Beloved tried to remodel the bathroom.  With all that stuff in the way, he couldn't access the ceiling or plumbing to finish the job. Thus inspired, we had the Great Downsizing.  

Over the course of a week, almost everything came down from the attic, bat guano and all (that's for a later story).  We were able to reduce it to 2 Rubbermaid bins and the rest went out for sale.

It was a great day!  The sale was scheduled to start at 9am, but The Professionals showed up at 7:30am.  ("Do you have any guitars or other stringed instruments?"  "Do you have any American Doll things?").  Neighbors shopped other neighbors piles.  We unloaded quite a lot to some neighborhood kids for free; well, not free: I charged one joke each.  The best of the afternoon was told by the 7yo girl at the end of the street who wears the coke-bottle glasses:  Why did the dinosaur cross the road?  Because there weren't any chickens back then!  I love it.

It was an interesting dynamic.  My goal for the day was to get it GONE!  Whenever I was asked a price, my answer was always the same: one dollar.  You want that?  You mean you'll walk away with it so I don't have to find another home for it?  SOLD!  One dollar.

My Beloved, however, is much more saavy.  He could judge the willingness to buy, watched as their fingertips lingered over other items.  When approached about a price, he'd quote a dollar or two higher than he thought they wanted to spend and, when they dropped their eyes, he'd throw in whatever else they wanted for another $2.  Seriously, if I'd been left to my own devices....well, if left to my own devices that stuff would have stayed in the attic until my estate sale, but for the point of this story....if left to my own devices I would have netted about $15.  With My Beloved?  $233.  That man is magic.

All the fun was over by noon and we had emptied all the big items and lot of the little. So, with the money we made plus very sizable tax deduction from Goodwill for the rest of the lot, we have enough to finish the cabinetry in the new bath and enough room in the attic to lay down new insulation.

Photo via locallectual