Yard sale switcheroo

Posted by Meghan in Sales We've Had | 4 Comments

Jenny and I had received an invitation for Libby (who you might remember from the Buffalo Girl sale) to participate an outdoor yard sale with a few other women. Since we have both accumulated a bunch of crap we need to get rid of, we were up for it.

I have to be honest here –- I had a shitty week and was getting a little stressed about finding the time to price the carload of stuff that I was able to get together. Add that the forecast was calling for rain and sun. How does a person plan for what could be a really nice day or pouring down rain?!?

On Friday I had gotten through some of it, but I was pretty much saying that I wouldn’t price any more. I didn’t want to waste the time to price everything if we were gonna get rained out and I would just have to store it in my basement for another winter. Ehg. Jenny was pretty optimistic that it was all going to work out and it would stay dry, so we each loaded up our cars on Friday night.

Come Saturday morning it was gray and raining. We called Libby who said that we should give it an hour and see how things go. We got some breakfast and had to admit to ourselves that it really wasn’t going to happen. I know when to admit defeat.

To add insult to injury, we hadn’t looked up any sales happening in the area, with the exception of one that Jenny happened to remember seeing on Craig’s as she was posting our ad. A local art program, BRAT, was having a fundraising/moving sale, so we headed over there. I had never been into the space before, I remember it had been a blind and window treatment place for a long time. I have probably walked by it many times since I have lived in Ballard.

There was some decent stuff there, but since we had both been in purge mode, we weren’t really feeling like bringing more stuff home. We started chatting away with the guy who was running the sale and after I mentioned that our sale had been rained out he said we were the second people to tell him that today. He then offered to let us bring our stuff down and join his sale. Really, this happened! After Jenny and I looked at each other for a second in disbelief we decided to go for it.

I called Libby telling her to come on over and that we needed to kick him down 10% of our proceeds for his art school. She seemed confused but interested and said she would grab one of the other rained-out sellers and come over.

We ran back to the house, updated our Craigslist ad with the new address, and drove both our crap-filled cars back to the sale. By the time we started to unload it was getting close to 10:00 –- pretty late for a rainy day sale, but WTF did we have to lose, right? We commandeered some empty space and quickly started putting out our stuff.

Scene from our (indoor) yard sale

The guy doing the sale ended up being really cool and he seemed happy to have someone else to B.S. with during the sale.

Libby and Michelle showed up after a while — to shop, not to sell. They said they were going to try and plan an indoor group sale in a couple of weeks instead. A girl we had seen at the crazy vintage sale came by and we talked for a while about how amazing that sale was. Karl eventually showed up as well and couldn’t believe I was using Babee Tenda for a display table.

Yard sale goods

We only had a few people come to the sale and really neither of us made a bankroll, but we had a good time and laughed about being invited to another person’s sale. As Jenny said, “This would only happen to us.”

I took a few boxes to the Goodwill and we both packed up some of our better items for the possible future sale and called it a day around 1:00.

4 Responses to Yard sale switcheroo

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