Monday, May 5, 2008

Black Friday, AMEN style

I admit that I have a tendency to enjoy some things that other people loathe, like proofreading, for instance. One thing that I REALLY love to do is have a garage sale. Matt claims to hate them, but I never hear him complaining on the way to the bank afterwards. This weekend, I had a ginormous garage sale at my house. And as is par for the course for me, it was insane.

I decided a couple of months ago to invite all of my friends to throw in their stuff so that I could have some company and I could advertise a "multi-family" sale. I ended up with about 9 other people selling things, though I had the most by far. I spent all day Thursday getting ready, but we heard about the dire storm warnings for Friday morning and prepared not to open up until noon. To our surprise, the storms cleared out early and we started setting up at 8:30 Friday morning. My friend Betsy got there to help, and I sent Matt to put the signs up since I figured a few people might already be out shopping and maybe we'd get some early business.

I underestimated.

About 45 seconds after he put up the signs, we had--I am NOT exaggerating, you can ask Betsy or Matt-- 60 people in our driveway. I found out later that Matt spent half an hour directing traffic on our street from the gridlock the sale caused. I took money as fast as I could, and Betsy did her best to pull out the rest of the stuff without knocking anybody down. Soon our friend Erin got there and helped out too, but it was 10:30 before I could see the street through the crowd of people from where I stood in the garage. Two women almost got in a fight because one cut in line. Seriously?! You're buying a couple of potholders for 25 cents! Wait 10 seconds!

As people came through and talked with us, we discovered that most of them were drawn to the sale because they believed our road to be the entrance to a large subdivision that is near our house that was having its neighborhood sale the same weekend. What serendipity! We weren't able to close shop on Friday until almost 5:00. Saturday was more moderate though still steady, and by 4:00 all the unsold stuff was at Goodwill, and Matt and I had an empty garage and $450 more than we had before the sale (all together, the sale made about $1300!) We were exhausted but happy, and I now have a new respect for my husband's traffic management duties. And potholders.

1 comment:

Alice said...

We are moving back to Arkansas!!! Can you come do a yard sale for me like that....please!!! (or at lease give me some Yard Sale 101)

You guys really made out with that yard sale being "down the street"...huh!!! Not to say that they wouldn't have come anyway. Maybe they spent all their money at your house before they found the other one LOL!!!!