Yard Sale Bloodbath

Meghan found a (now-removed) Craigslist ad (how? who knows) for a 52-hour sale which happened in Minneapolis a couple weeks back. I think this is absolutely insane … but in a genius kind of way. And I’m impressed with their stamina - we are usually ready to pack it in four and a half hours into our sales!

From the ad:

Do garage sales that close up at 6pm annoy you, how about having to wait until some arbitrary time when the seller decides to get up and get their sale running. Well worry not. We are running the 52 hour garage sale. We started at 5pm Friday and we are going until 7pm Sunday non-stop.

Clothes, furniture, legacy computer parts, new computer parts, printers, gadgets, kids items, toys and much more!!!! And if you think this is crazy, there’s going to be a couple time slots (30min ea. 4 times) during Sunday’s sale, where nearly everything is 75-90% off!!

The most kick-ass part is that the sale was OUTSIDE.

Due to various other obligations I haven’t been able to go to sales for the past few Saturdays. I went to a few Friday-morning sales last week, but they were so lame and boring that I actually wished I’d just stayed home. And I did make it to the Olivine sale that Meghan blogged about earlier (purchasing 3 shirts and a pink Hobo purse; all cute, but nothing mindblowing). But those excursions just aren’t the same as doing the full Saturday run of sales for a few hours.

It must be going to my head, because last night I had a crazy dream about a rummage sale. In this dream, Meghan and our friend Shari (who has maybe been to sales with us once or twice a few years ago, but is not a regular guest star) were waiting outside for the rummage sale to start on its first day (Friday). It was some legendary sale that had always been really good, so we were excited. I was trying to decide whether I had time to go - I think I was supposed to be at work, but in the end I decided to go in “just for a few minutes.” We all picked up baskets (like the kind of basket you carry around at the grocery store, which they had a stack of - like that would ever happen at a rummage sale!) and I quickly grabbed a vintage polyester shirt with a cool flower/geometric pattern (the print looked more 40’s even though it was polyester like a ’70s shirt) and a couple of other little things that I can’t remember. I know I was in a quandary thinking “which room should I go into next?” and getting a little overwhelmed, because the place was huge.

I’m not sure what happened next, but later in the dream I was back at the sale in the evening and I was talking to my friend Jenny (yes she is also named Jenny) on the phone and she was urging me to go in because the end of the first day of the sale is always the best part (which makes absolutely no sense whatsoever, but that’s what she said in the dream). I was outside of the sale and I was holding these pants that I was really excited about: they were white terry cloth bellbottoms with big turquoise and purple swirls on them. For those of you who don’t know me in real life, please be assured that this is not really anything I would ever wear, let alone get really excited about finding at a sale. I told Jenny I was going to go into the sale after I went and put the pants into my car (I’m not sure why I had them outside the sale if I hadn’t been inside yet, or why I was going to go put them into my car instead of paying for them). Then on the way to my car it occurred to me that Meghan and I still hadn’t decided if we were going to have our sale the next day and we still hadn’t done signs or an ad and we were running out of time so I called her to discuss this and … that’s about all I remember.

The sad part is that the last part is almost true. It’s Thursday night and we still don’t know for sure whether we’re having a sale this Saturday. Earlier in the week it said it was going to rain, but now it looks like it might be okay, so we’re in a quandary. But we definitely aren’t going to wait til Friday night to decide! Tomorrow morning we’ll check as many weather reports as possible, consider any other mitigating factors, and decide whether it’s on or not. Since we were originally going to have the sale three weekends ago we are getting anxious to get all our sale crap out of our houses. But on the other hand, it’s really no fun to have a sale in the rain …

Olivine is a swanky boutique in downtown Ballard. The girls that work there (and usually the owner) have had a yearly yard sale in front of the store for the past three years, where they sell off clothes and accessories they want to get rid of. Both Jenny and I have gone each year with interesting results. Pretty much everything in the sale is nice, but might be too small or not the right style. Plus, you have to grab stuff super fast. Many items are high end and it’s a good idea to be there right when the sale starts. This year (and I think last year) a percentage of the proceeds went to a local breast cancer fund.

The last couple of years I have walked away with some really amazing stuff and last year I spent over $200 and left with like 4 pairs of Sven Clogs, AG Cords, Citizens of Humanity Jeans and other nice items.

This year I think we started to get ourselves into a complete lather about how good the sale would be this year. Maybe I should learn that’s never a good idea, since nothing can really be as good as your mind can make it out to be. This year was good, but maybe not as good as past years. There were a lot of smaller sizes (heck, I haven’t been a size 27 since the mid ‘90s) but I still managed to spend $180. Here’s what I picked up:

• 2 skirts (one 3 Dot and one Cosabella) - both are larger sizes and I thought would be good for summer. Both make me look like a total fat ass.
• 1 pair of AG velvet pants that I really like, but won’t wear until winter. One pair of AG cords that I don’t like. One pair of jeans that I like.
• 3 pairs of shoes - 2 that I like and one pair that are cute, but are too big once I really got them home and walked around in them.
• 1 Hobo wallet in purple – that I really love.
• 1 Hobo clutch in black.
• A pair of Citizens cut-offs for $5 that are too small.
• 1 black Harvey’s seatbelt bag (made out of actual seatbelts!).

On Saturday morning, I had a really queasy stomach. I had a root canal earlier in the week and woke up at 3:00 a.m. in pain, so I rolled out of bed and took a pain pill. I forgot that you can’t take pain pills on an empty stomach, so in the morning I was in agony.

Being the yard sale trooper that I am, I thought that I could work through it. I drove to a sale that started at 8:30 and when I pulled up I thought I might get sick, but I turned off the ignition and just stopped to get some fresh air. The sale was a total bust, but I was proud of myself for keeping my composure. I was able to get about 15 blocks before I had to pull into a parking lot and get sick out my car door. I was really embarrassed.

I was feeling pretty defeated and I headed home for a day of TV and the couch. I washed up, drank some water, and after an hour was feeling good enough to give it another try.

I hit a couple of sales, but I didn’t buy anything and I wasn’t feeling very good. Then I saw a sign for a block sale. Most of the sales on the block had family items, baby clothes, toys. I was thinking that I should just go home.

Then I saw a box of new Aveda products and I started grabbing stuff before even asking the price. I had my hands filled to the point of not being able to hold anymore. I spotted another box of large size Aveda hair products. A few other shoppers had started to grab stuff and in my weakened state I wasn’t very pushy. All small items were $1 and all large ones $2. I filled one box, then started in on another box. The woman owned a salon and didn’t want to carry the Aveda line anymore.

Most of the items still had price tags with the original boxes. I ended up spending a little over $50. I think you can see from the photo that I got a screaming deal.

I went home happy.

Over our many years of going to sales we have noticed some indicators that more than likely, the sale is going to be a waste of time. Of course, none of these are 100% accurate and even the worst-looking sale can turn out to have some gems (as Meghan can tell you, once she pulled a pair of big-E Levi’s out of a bin at a sale which seemed to have nothing but junky toys). However, with so many sales out there, sometimes you want to maximize your chances of finding the best sales by skipping the probably-lame ones.

Here’s our list of things that make our suck-detectors go off:

• The sale is excessively hard to get to. It always seems unfair that it’s not the other way around. If you have to work really hard to find a sale, it seems only fair that the payoff should be great. Right? Sadly, it doesn’t seem to work that way. Most of the times when we’ve been led down a circuitous route to a hard-to-find sale, via bad or missing signs or a confusing address, it turns out to be the worst sale of the day. I don’t know why.
• The signs are drawn by kids.
• Balloons are present.
• They only have about six things out for sale. The odds that they are going to be the six things you are looking for are really, really small.
• The sale just looks bad when you drive past it.
• It’s in a part of town with no sidewalks. This might be specific to Seattle, but we have found that the no-sidewalk-land sales tend to be skippable.

Again: there are exceptions. So don’t start getting all smug because you went to some sale with hand-drawn signs and balloons that was out in the furthest reaches of the no-sidewalk part of town and it was the BEST. SALE. EVAR. We’ve been to good sales that fit each one of these guidelines. But as general rules to help figure out which sales aren’t worth our time, we think they are fairly reliable.

I wasn’t really planning on going to sales on Saturday. I thought I might stay home, work on getting items priced for our re-scheduled sale, go to the dog park, and maybe clean the house. In the end I woke up early, had some coffee and headed out around 8:00. Even being on the fence, I had printed out some sales the night before — just in case.

I have this habit of really being organized when I print out my sales and I even highlight what time they are open and the address, placing the sales that look the best on top and then dividing them up by area. Not today. The very first sale had no address — in fact I found 2 listings with no address. I mostly just drove around to see if I could find any signs.

The first sale was held by the Seattle Women’s Rugby Team. Nice ladies, but really bad sale. Video tapes, bad books and t-shirts were the bulk of what they had. Honestly, the sales started out crappy. They either had nothing, everything was priced way too high, or they didn’t have anything out yet. I don’t mind that if it’s before the sale opens, but when you list 9:00 as your start time, you should try and have most of your items out.

One sale had been listed as being a benefit for Doggie Hospital Bills (way to pull at my heart strings!) and out of the 5 girls doing the sale, 3 of them worked at Nordstrom. BINGO! I didn’t lose my mind as much as I could have. I did purchase a large rolling Roxy Hawaiian suitcase that I remember seeing at Nordstrom last year (for a whopping $110) and I talked her down from $20 to $15. I purchased some (unopened) Clarins and Kiehls products, a copy of Madonna’s SEX book for $3 (I never actually looked at it until now) and some nice new candles. Final bill: $32.00.

I hit some serious duds today and I was almost ready to give up when I hit 2 different estate sales. At the first one I purchased some really cute 80’s clothes (one T-shirt says “Rip It!” with wacky 80’s cube patterns) and 3 different Boy Scout/Cub Scout books.

The next one had started the day before and it looked like folks had walked all over the house.

This sale was what I can only describe as “Crafting Gone Wild” — this woman crafted/collected way beyond what I would consider normal. In fact I would put this out as a warning to not purchase yards of fabric, patterns or yarn that you don’t need and won’t use.

I was excited to find the box for a Jewel Toned Owl purse, but it turned out to just have more knitting magazines inside. I did take a photo of the box, since it was pretty cool.

All in all it turned out okay for a day when I didn’t even think I was going to go to any sales at all.

I was going to add to the recap yesterday, but then Meghan sent me this link and poking around the rest of the site pretty much sucked up my afternoon - especially after we discovered a photo of a chainmail-wearing teddy bear named “Sir Snuffles of Gund.” Eek!

We did take a little while to get out of the house, partly because I showed up late and partly because we couldn’t help sitting around watching Meghan and Leslie’s dogs go nuts together for a while. Our first stop was the cash machine, near which we saw this … art project? Whatever it was, we liked it enough to take a picture.

Leslie and Meghan talked about the Downsizing Sale. I was poking around in the stuff outside for a while and kept being surprised at not finding much. Eventually I did pick up a huge plastic/tupperware type thing for holding rolls of wrapping paper. Owning this makes me feel a little bit like a demented housewife who gets way too excited about sales at Target, but it’s actually really useful for getting my random rolls of wrapping paper (mostly thrifted/yard-saled) out of the way. There were some rolls of paper included, which were mostly cute (a few will be donated or featured at the yard sale we’ll eventually get to have).

After quite a while in the house we were just about ready to go when I discovered a whole big office room in the basement that none of us had even noticed before. There were three huge bookcases filled with books and at first I wasn’t sure if they were for sale, but as Meghan mentioned, everything was for sale. I asked how much and the woman said “Most of them are a dollar each, but if you find something you want I’ll probably sell it to you for like a quarter. Except for some of the first editions are more.” I started looking through and ended up with a huge pile. Everything from Dante’s Inferno to weird fiction authors I’d never heard of before to the Tibetan Book Of The Dead to an exhibition book from some recent group art show in Brooklyn. Meghan found the aforementioned Last of the Mohicans “stash book” (looks like a hardcover book but is really hollowed out to store … stuff) and then found another one which she handed over to me, made to look like Homer’s Odyssey!

I figured that I had enough (even though I also knew if I made a second pass through the shelves I’d probably find more) and went upstairs to find out how much my stack would be. The woman having the sale pulled out two first editions I’d grabbed kind of randomly just because they looked interesting (Seamus Heaney and a facsimile edition of a Yeats book) and said those would be more. Eventually she said $30 for the whole pile - $10 each for the first eds. and $10 for the rest (about 15 books). I told her I’d do the stack but even though I was sure $10 each was a good deal on the other two, it was too much for me. She said “But I really want you to read them!” and came down to $5 each, on the condition that I promise to read them. So now I got some reading to do, along with the whole other stack of books, along with my already too-big waiting-to-be-read pile at home. Yes, I have a bit of a problem (and as Meghan says, it’s hard not to pick up books at sale when they are so cheap compared to buying them new, or even used!).

The rest of the sales weren’t as good, and the rain was really starting to come down, which made shopping a bit more difficult. I was feeling sorry for the thrift stores who were probably going to get a lot of soggy donations later (some people didn’t have their stuff even remotely covered; others had tarps laid over here and there). Most of the rest of my purchases were for my kid: a pair of red and white checkerboard Vans (too big, but she’ll grow), an amazing kids’ vintage bowling shirt, a big tub of Legos, and of course - another copy of Corduroy, this time with all pages intact. Yes!

The only other notable item to report is that Meghan purchased a rice krispie treat that didn’t suck. Oh, and that thanks to Leslie’s Mad Libs, I probably won’t be able to stop myself from singing “Jingle Boobs” a few times next holiday season.

We had a brief debate about whether My Little Pony stuff was collectible or not. Our unscientific verdict was that the older ones probably were but the newer ones probably weren’t. Regardless, this sign made us laugh.

The original plan was to have a yard sale last Saturday. We even spent a couple of weeks planning all the details. Heck, I even spent an hour in my basement pricing items – something that I loathe doing and usually put off until the very last moment. Then it rained on Monday, on Tuesday, and again on Wednesday. Come Thursday it was time to have a “Come to Jesus” moment and get real about calling it off. After planning to have a yard sale and then having to cancel, it just made me more determined to go out and hit some sales.

We planned on meeting at 8:00 am, but I’m pretty sure that we didn’t make it into the car until 8:30. I am unable to remember the first two sales before we got to a sale that had been listed as “Downsizing Sale - From 3000 square feet to 40′ boat” - and they really weren’t kidding.

The house was amazing and it had a to-die-for view of the Puget Sound. We hit the back yard and it felt like a yard sale outside, but inside it felt like they still lived there and nothing was priced. None of us knew what was for sale and what wasn’t. It was a really wonderful house, but it felt like nothing was sale in the house, when in fact everything was for sale.

I found 7 wire locker room baskets for a buck each inside on a shelf. I purchased cosmetics, something that I sometimes feel is a good idea and sometimes the person skeeves me out and I don’t want anything touching me that the person used. She seemed nice (a.k.a. not gross) and it was nice stuff - Chanel and Bobbi Brown, mostly unused. Plus, I get in a frenzy of needing to grab stuff right away when I should use more common sense …

I grabbed a bunch of jewelry, some of it not my style, but I knew it was nice stuff. The one thing that I’m really into was a turquoise necklace with large beads. Something that I would never buy for full price, but for a buck – who cares! In her kitchen I picked up two Le Creuset Stoneware 2-quart pitchers, one in blue and one in red, for $5 each.

I will let Jenny talk about the books that we scored, but I am pretty stoked on my “Last of the Mohicans” hollow stash book. I spent $35.25 at the sale and we pretty much filled the car with that one sale.

This week we had our friend Leslie (a.k.a. Bitch On Wheels) come along with us to yard sales (after being forced to admit rain was likely and cancelling our plans for our own sale). We always like to have “guest stars” come saling with us once in a while, and we talked Leslie into doing a guest star post for the blog as well - here it is!

As we had to postpone the crap-be-gone yard sale due to rain, we took advantage of the unscheduled morning to grab steamy cups of coffee and add more stuff to our already cluttered houses. In spite of the steady downpour, there were a number of sales featuring merchandise under tarps, under tents, in garages, and one fantastic house-wide moving sale (the sellers were purging just about everything to move onto a 40-foot sail boat and they were cool people with wonderful and reasonably priced stuff). I’ll leave it to your regular YSBB hostesses to describe the haul, but we more than filled the trunk with junk at that one sale alone.

Later in the morning, we drove to the Ballard High Cheerleaders garage sale (go blood-thirsty beavers!). There was nothing remarkable, but I picked up a pair of adjustable kids inline skates (a gift for 4-year old Lemmy) and a booklet of Christmas Mad Libs. I LOVE second-hand Mad Libs, particularly when they’re already filled out. While this booklet was 99.5% unused, a single plural noun was filled in on the Jingle Bells Mad Lib. Some snickering youth had inserted the tried and true word “boobs.” (Note to America’s pre-teens: body parts are fine, but adding a disease or taint to your chosen body part always gives it a bit more comedic punch). We proceeded to fill out the remainder of the Mad Lib, but it was too early in the morning for prime ick-factor vocabulary and Jingle Bells really doesn’t make the best Mad Lib foundation.

More sale recap still to come!

It was one of the most beautiful days out last Saturday, so I knew there would be tons of sales. Since both Jenny and I are trying to get ready to have a yard sale next week, I planned (in my mind) to only go out for 3 hours and to only stay in our neighborhood.

I didn’t notice that I didn’t have my camera with me until I went to what I can only describe as a “bachelor pad sale,” in a good-sized house filled with nothing that I wanted to buy. It was an estate sale, and it was pretty clear that he lived alone. The house wasn’t exactly dirty, but more masculine than domestic. Up for sale were crappy albums, Playboy magazines, car and motor-cross magazines, really butt-ugly clothes, plastic glasses, tools, and some of the most nasty furniture known to man. This house would have been ripe for photos, but it was 9:00 am and I was about 40 blocks from home, so I wasn’t about to go back for the camera.

Most of the sales I went too were just sales, nothing to really talk about, nothing really great for sale — I went to three sales that only had baby stuff. I hate baby sales! I would call these three “hidden” sales, since I would have just done a drive-by, but the sale was either hidden on their back porch or behind a large fence or shrub. Fuckers.

I went to a sale and purchased 3 vintage ’50s era lampshades. I need to be honest here and say that this takes my lampshade collection up to 4 that don’t have lamps they go with. Since the shades are harder to find I used to buy them and pair them with lamps, but these days it’s hard to find “the good stuff,” so I haven’t seen anything that goes. The 2 smalls ended up being $5 and the large was $8. I also purchased a red Bakelite stirring spoon.

I didn’t really get to see too many freaks this weekend, but one of the last sales I went too was an estate sale on my street that started at 10:00. I really don’t go to them very often when they start, since I don’t like standing in line when I could be at other sales. The house was old and I was feeling that it could be worth it, so I got a number (eek! NUMBER 46) and got in line. I figured even if the sale was crappy it was in a huge house built around 1908 so that would be cool.

Everything inside was old, some of it much older than what I collect, and I think my mom would have loved some of the china and other items. I found a pretty orange brown honey comb Bauer bowl right away. It was pricey at $15, but with no chips I thought I would carry it around with me at the sale and then make up my mind.

The woman who’d lived there was a rock hound and the whole basement was filled with rocks, polished and not, tons of cigar boxes filled with rocks. I picked up two 40’s handbags, an early copy of Walt Disney ‘Thumper’ another wire-handled basket (I fear I’m getting a little TOO into those) … and the most odd thing I purchased: BOOZE! She had two unopened bottles of Amaretto and Creme De Cacao, both sealed, and both for $2. Alcohol doesn’t go bad does it? Anyone want to come over for Grass Hopper Cocktails?

We have generally found that there aren’t a ton of sales on the Saturday of a holiday weekend (like Memorial Day or Labor Day). But last Saturday there were a good handful so we went out for a few hours. Most of the sales were just so-so. We went to one fundraising sale where I found nothing, but donated $2 for a cookie (Meghan got a rice krispie treat which once again was sub-par - what is up with that?) About halfway through she ran out of money when she spent the last of it on a small vintage stained glass window (muttering all the while about how her boyfriend was going to think she was insane for buying it). A few sales later I mentioned that I had only spent $5 the whole day and she said with a horrified look “You mean all of that stuff in the trunk is mine?” Sadly, this was almost true.

We went to one sale in the carport of some new townhouses where just about all there was were trashy platform shoes and computer games. The girl there asked us what we were looking for, claiming that she could probably produce it from her house. She boasted about producing some “ruby slippers” in just the right size for a previous shopper. We just left, and agreed that we had both sort of wanted to take a picture of her and her odd selection of stuff, but didn’t even want to ask because she probably would have been too into it.

The best sale of the day came a bit later - an estate sale that didn’t sound all that great from the ad, but turned out to be pretty cool, with a house full of crusty but kinda fabulous old junk. Meghan spotted this picture on the wall:

“How much is the ponytail girl?” she asked the woman taking money by the door. “You mean me?” she replied. “My sister drew that, long ago.” It wasn’t really for sale but it almost sounded like she was thinking about it. Meghan said “I’m not even going to ask you then” and we moved on.

We were also pretty entertained by this collection of old Frango boxes (and entertaining button selection. Do it! Do it Now!)

After that we decided to call it a day and go have breakfast. We ended up stopping at a couple more sales along the way where I bought an orange phone for a quarter that turned out not to work, and a hilarious book called “Sexercise” with line drawings of a man (with fantastic 70s mustache and sideburns) and a woman demonstrating the “exercises.” Still, my contributions to the trunk were pretty meager!