I like a bargain, just like anyone else, but I don’t see the appeal in surfing the local neighborhoods looking for yard sales and garage sales. It just seems counterintuitive to me to spend the time and gas driving around looking for someone’s hand-me-downs and/or trash, only to have to spend a few dollars to fix it up or spruce it up, just to save a few bucks. Sure, I have picked up a few things over the past few years, like my charcoal smoker, that I enjoy, but it seems like an obsession that has little pay off.
Over Memorial Day weekend, we decided to clean out our garage. So we dragged everything out into the front yard. We started drawing looky-lous the way a dead oppossum draws flies on the side of the road. The street in front of our house has a speed limit of 45 m.p.h., but folks were crawling past our yard all afternoon. We had a few people stop and rummage through our stuff, until I told them I was simply cleaning out the garage.
Eventually I took a plank and spray painted “CLEANING” on it, and used it and a couple of sawhorses to block the driveway. One guy stopped 10 minutes later and pulled into what was left of the driveway, leaving his van to stick out into the street. “I’m just cleaning my garage.” “But this stuff is for sale, right?” You’ve got to be kidding me. Not 2 minutes later, a lady parked in the next driveway, but before she could get halfway across the yard, I said, “I’m just cleaning my garage.” “Oh, that’s why you have the sign that says ‘CLEANING.'”
I couldn’t make this up.