The Garage Sale

Image via WikipediaEvery year on Labor Day weekend Schroon Lake's Senior Citizen Club hosts a town-wide garage sale. For twenty dollars you can rent a space on the grass at the town beach, drag all your unwanted stuff there and then see if you can at least make your twenty dollars back. I'm not a big fan of garage sales, but after selling the cabin and emptying our self-storage unit the basement is a bit crowded (i.e., I can't get to the washer and dryer without climbing over things).

The good thing about taking part in a garage sale someone else has organized is that you have a deadline. You can't keep putting off going through all your stuff until you feel like doing it. The bad thing about taking part in a garage sale someone else has organized is that you have a deadline. They aren't going to change the date just because you keep putting off going through all your stuff.

My mom, who is a big fan of getting rid of stuff, whatever the method, and who is also a big-wig committee chair or something of the Senior Citizen Club, rented us a space for the garage sale. She did this sometime in July, I think. Which means I've had weeks to get my stuff together and labeled.

Nobody should be surprised that I didn't start until this week.

My mom says I work better under pressure. I suppose that's true, since working under pressure is better than not working at all, although the quality might improve if it wasn't the eleventh hour.

So here it is, 10:00 pm, the night before the garage sale, and I'm as finished as I'm going to get with garage sale stuff. The house is a disaster because there are piles of things people didn't want to give up but which have not yet found a home. Tomorrow morning we have to put all our stuff into the cars and drag it down to the town beach by 8:00 am (in the rain, if the weather forecast is correct). And I'm tired and cranky.

I am never again selling anything in a garage sale. After tomorrow, I am officially retired from the junk selling business. There is still way too much stuff in our basement but, if it can't get reused or recycled, it's getting donated.

You are probably thinking that, without the looming garage sale deadline, I will never finish emptying the basement. But I have other motivation. I was just given a treadmill and it needs a home before it starts to snow so I can begin my half-ironman training. Which means that I'll be dragging stuff to the Share Shop in December.

Hey, I work better under pressure.