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Hello, my fellow sweet shoppe friends… Rebecca here with today’s post, titled – What Was I Thinking?  hahaha…  When I told my plan to the SSD Babes and Designers (and the reason why I was going to be scarce for a few days)… they all told me I was nuts!

Many of you probably remember my post (June 3, 2012 One Person’s Junk) a few months back about my love to go to rummage sales with my mom. It’s something fun we like to do and we have found some really great things over the years! Well… after all these years of going to sales, merging to households 8 years ago when hubby and I got married, then five years of baby/toddler stuff, … you can imagine that our basement has become to look like a candidate for A&E’s Hoarders…  😮  Hubby has been after me that we have too much stuff… and I totally agree and was determined to have a yard sale this summer.  Well… as we were closing in on the end of July and nothing planned… one late July Saturday morning I was looking at the calender and saw that we didn’t have anything planned for the following Friday and Saturday and declared that we were going to have a sale!! What was I thinking?

Now, I’m not a newbie to having rummage sales… for as long as I remember growing up, my mom has had a yearly sale and I would help with that… but it’s a different story when it’s your stuff that you are going through and figuring out what to price it at… that is so hard!! What was I thinking?

I told my mom and she was all gun ho… she said we could do it!!  I had started over winter getting somethings sorted, but nowhere near to the point that we were ready for a sale! The worse offender in my basement, taking up space, was J’s clothes and all his baby stuff. I went way overboard (in true first time mommy fashion) on everything… especially clothes. I had hit some really good rummage sales and J was the best dressed kid for the last 5 years!  So I went through boxes and boxes of clothes, marking them… and my mom offered to iron them all (oh, I’m sure she wished she didn’t offer her services after filling up the back of their SUV of boxes for just NB-3T sized clothes).  Then I focused my attention on pulling up all the baby stuff…. and cleaning the garage out. Did I mention that during the last week in July, Wisconsin was experiencing some of our hottest days of July, ever… it was so hot and humid… and here I’m cleaning the garage out! What was I thinking? Oh – and I learned that my dear hubby taught our son about the joys of being a boy and that the world is just one large bathroom… *sigh*  geez, right in the front of the house… off track, back to what I was thinking…

It has been years since I worked so physically hard to get something done on time… kiddo was in Vacation Bible School at church during the mornings, which helped a lot – especially when it came to getting all the toys together. You can imagine that every baby toy I pulled out of the box, it was the kiddo’s new favorite toy! My step-dad had taken the week off to work around the house… but he’s plans were redirected in helping Mom (and me) pull up things up from the basement and set up tables… and he also helped with taking and getting kiddo to VBS. My hubby had his work buddies (who I call the Think Tank) figuring on how to do yard signs – don’t want them too nice, people like to steal them in my area – really? I know – what are these people thinking?

Finally the day came… we decided that we were going to open at 2pm on Thursday afternoon… and the only place we advertised the sale was on Craigslist. This was the first time we used “free” advertising vs. putting it in the paper, so we didn’t know what to expect. Then this moved in…

We had a huge downpour for about 20 minutes before the official time for the sale to begin. We had a lot of stuff that we were going to be putting out in the driveway… and after the storm passed, we only had 10 minutes to get ourselves in position.  Apparently the advertising worked… we had about 30 people standing in our driveway waiting for us to open up our garage doors. It was 2 minutes to 2pm and people were banging on our garage door asking when we were going to open!! Finally we opened the doors… oh, how I wished I had my camera to take photos of what was happening… it was like Black Friday in my own garage!!! People were pushing and shoving to get in… and it was like that for the first two hours!  It was a mad house… I had my mom and step dad helping… it was nuts!  What was I thinking?

We finally closed the doors at around 5:00… phew… it was just nuts, but we really did move a lot of big things…. and Friday was the start of a new day. The weather was nice – not as hot as it has been… and the people came in a steady flow. We moved a lot of baby supplies stuff… everything from bassinets to bottle warmers to boppies to play and packs. We had double of so much stuff because my mom was watching kiddo at her house that first year when I was still working part time. And the toys! I was just amazed at the amount of toys that moved… I had kept all the original packaging of kiddos toys with the thought that I could charge a bit more at a sale than with it outside of the box… by the end of Friday, almost all the toys were gone. The thing I was most surprised at is that very little of J’s clothes went. And I have a ton of Gymboree, Gap, The Children’s Place… many in sets… and I thought very fair prices… and I sold very little of it.  What did go were the no name stuff that was stained and I almost didn’t put out!  We still had another full day to go, so I went downstairs to see if I could find more things to help fill in the vacant spots… so instead of watching the opening of the Olympics – I was sweating in the garage marking more stuff… what was I thinking?

Saturday was a slow day… and more people out trying to bargain you down more… I should have mentioned earlier that the whole bargaining is very annoying to me… if I was going to sell it for the price you are asking, I would have marked it at that.  And this next story takes the cake… and shows how technology even touches the good ol’ rummage sale… what was this lady thinking?

I had a Little Tike’s slide that was more for a 2-4 year old… it was small… and I purchased it at a rummage sale up the street a few years back. My son hardly played with it and I put $20 on it.  A young mother and her sister came to the sale… the mother’s son really liked the slide and my hubby went over to try to “seal the deal” – my hubby rocks at sales… the Sister asks my hubby if would be willing to sell it for $10.  My hubby told her that he would ask me, but knows that it won’t be for $10… and of course I said no. The lowest I would go is $18.  So he goes back and tells the Sister that the lowest we would go was $18… and her reply, “so, you won’t take $10?”  Really?  She then comes to me and asks me about $10… and I said, “No, the lowest I will go is $18… I know I can get $20 on Craigslist for it.”  The Sister whips out her smartphone and checks on Craigslist for this slide… and of course there are a few out there – they are a hot ticket item. So, back comes the Sister… “Well, I see on Craigslist that I can get one for $15… and there are some out there at $20… would you sell for $15?”  My reply – “Well, if you can get it for $15, they you should get the one on Craigslist… I told you my lowest price is $18.”  The Sister just glares at me and says… “It’s only $3 difference – that isn’t that much money”… Me, biting my tongue to comment that she is the one with the smart phone and she is arguing with me over a few dollars?… “umh, I’m asking $20, so it’s $5 difference… I want to get my money out if it, I’m not here to give it away!”    The Sister turns in a huff and tells her sister, “Come, I will get you the one on Craigslist and they can just sit with this one!”   Oh, I was so annoyed by this whole exchange!  Side note… not more than 20 minutes later, someone else came and purchased the slide… 😉

So… what was I thinking?  I made a lot of cash and moved a lot of stuff… that is what I was thinking!! hahaha… I still have a ton more stuff to get rid of in the basement… and I’m more than motivated to get down there and tackle it! We talked about having another sale yet this fall… but I think we are going to wait to Spring – maybe people will be more inclined to buy kid clothes.

Have you done a rummages sale? Do you have any crazy stories that came from it?

{{hugs}}

Rebecca aka mamabee