Global Sales

When I say we took our garage sale "global" this year, I don't mean our masking-taped tags reached every corner of the globe.

I mean we were having our sale in a snow globe.

Or so it seemed. I am not even going to post another depressing photo of what we've had to wake up to each day this week. Today, it was a fresh blanket of white that normally would be pretty.

But not on garage sale day.

When I help my friend Audrey (Carter's former sitter) with the sale each year, she and her mother handle the Friday shift and I do Saturday. We've had all kinds of weather. Never been too hot, that's for sure. But there have been some miserable Saturdays -- and they were worse years ago when Carter played soccer in the cold in the morning and I'd go to the sale from there.

But today, I left the house of sleeping men, layered up in my long underwear, turtle neck, winter coat, gloves and "hand warmers" in my boots. That's how we start garage sale season in Wisconsin! While the sun kept trying to peek out, there were times today we'd stare out the garage door and the snowflakes were so huge, we'd swear we were in a snowglobe. Seriously.

The diehards came out of the woodwork, thankfully, and we had close to 100 cars each day. (We count cars so we can have a guess-timated crowd count). Typically, when it's nice that is, we have well over 100 cars on Friday, then less on Saturday. Yesterday, since it was a lot of rain and snow mixed together, we had a few less than today. All in all, we are doing OK despite the weather. And we still have tomorrow.

This year, I didn't add much inventory to the sale. Mainly it's Carter's boys-size clothes and my books. I was going to do some extra tagging of some household items but didn't get around to it with all this stuff going on with my dad. Last weekend was going to be my "pricing" weekend. Not that I am going to blame him for my paltry $4.25 profit!

I was just glad to get rid of one item that was, I believe, in its fourth or fifth year on the sale. It's one of those "video chairs" kids can sit in while playing video games. Carter HAD to have it years ago... at a garage sale, of course. Now we've dropped the price a little each year and finally today it sold. Hallelujah. That takes up way too much space to hang onto during the "off season."

Now if I can just get his clothes down to one tote, I'll feel good. The books are moving slowly this year, though, so I don't have high hopes. That's OK. I'll just bring them back next year. Sometimes, it just takes the right bookworm to walk into the garage.

Or snow globe.