Garage Sales

I went garage sale-ing yesterday.  Our community has a huge sale every year, and last year there were many amazing finds.  And two other neighborhoods were having community sales also.  I made sure I was out the door the second the sale started this year.  I learned, and was reminded of, some things.

•  There are people who drive Smart Cars to garage sales!  Isn't that like bringing a knife to a gunfight?
• If you really think it is that collectable of an item, don't try to sell it at a garage sale.  You probably will get to keep your $10 Serena Williams Barbie in a crushed box.
• If you go to the same garage sale two years in a row, you will see some of the exact same items for sale two years in a row.
• People have a lot, A LOT of baby gear they are trying to unload.
• Do not let your awkward tween man the garage sale by himself.  I walked by one, carrying a load of books I has just bought for my girls.  "Do you like books?  I have books."  No thanks, just these ones for me.  "What are you looking for then?  What do you want?"  Oh, I'm mainly looking for bigger things.  "I have this printer.  It's a bigger thing."  Thanks, but no.
• If a house has the filthiest stove you have seen in your life (and remember, I served a mission in the south.  I have seen filthy) sitting outside it for sale, you can confidently walk away from that sale knowing everything they are selling will have a smell you can't get rid of.
• There are bike trailers for dogs!  For dogs!  And it looked nicer than the nice bike trailer for kids I bought at the garage sale last year!
• Do not, under any circumstances, let your shopping become synchronized with they irritating couple who double park, block driveways, drive super-duper slowly, and then cut you off when they decide to do a three point turn in the middle of the street.  Street after street after street.
• If you talk to a sweet older lady and tell her how much you admire her cute yard, she might take you into her back yard and show you the amazing playhouse her late husband built for their granddaughters.  

•  If you buy a stack of sombreros for a party you're planning, and a stack of fairy books for your daughters and walk into the house carrying both, your daughters will jump off the couch and run toward you with lights and excitement in your eyes . . . and grab the sombreros.
• Sometimes, even though you've planned ahead and gotten $100 dollars out of the bank in anticipation of the tremendous deals you will find, at the end of the day you realize how much you already have and how much you don't really need and you  only spend $6 in a morning of garage sale-ing.  And then, you console yourself by planning out how you will trick your husband into thinking you spent all your money before you reveal how little you actually spent, and HE NEVER EVEN ASKS!  Oh well, it was still a good morning.