Yard Sale Bloodbath

In his comment on our last post, Willy Callit mentioned one peculiar item we ran across:

Why on earth would anyone bother to keep a chocolate Nordstrom’s card for, apparently, decades?

I can’t really provide an answer to that one. But I can tell you who would bother to grab it out of someone’s free box …

I was just fascinated, especially considering it’s gotta be pretty ancient. (Nordstrom hasn’t used that logo in a looooong time.)

So I picked it up … although I already know it’s probably going to end up getting chucked into the ever-growing pile of stuff destined for my next sale. (See also: the yard sale catch and release program.)

It’s one thing if a kid had written up this sign, but the fact that it was actually printed up like this … for a school fundraiser … well, that’s pretty bad.

Rumage: does that rhyme with plumage?

Thanks to Karl for the photo!

A few weeks ago Jenny and hit a couple of estate sales and it wasn’t amazing enough to do a full blog about, but a few things we bumped into seemed worthy of a quick post.

One of the estate sales was in an amazing house that had not 1, not 2, but 3 pianos! We went out through the backyard to see what was in the garage and it was a huge mess, but up next to the Genie garage door opener was a chandelier. WTF?

Here is the Auto Coffee Maker. Now, what is so odd about an automatic coffee maker? They are a dime a dozen … No, it’s a coffee maker for your car.

Is it just me, or does she look a little bit like Isabella Rosselini?

Finally, I really love this comb mixed with hair dryer.

I happened to watch Oprah last week (which is not all that regular of an occurrence!) and it was about this woman who had a serious hoarding problem. She had a huge house that was filled up to a truly alarming level. I guess she just really liked to go shopping … then she would come home and have nowhere to put any more stuff, so she’d just pile it on up on top of the already huge mounds of past purchases. It was definitely out of control.

De-cluttering guru Peter Walsh was there to help her get as much stuff as possible out of the house (which required a vast team of helpers) and to motivate her to stop buying so much stuff. There’s a summary of the whole episode, along with a whole bunch of scary photos, over here. (Here’s just one shot from the cluttered house. Yikes!)

The amount of stuff they took out of her house was amazing — it filled up a 10,000 square foot warehouse. When I saw the stuff all laid out I thought, that looks like a huge-ass rummage sale! And it turned out they did hold a sale with it all — making something like $13,000. (Which is a heck of a lot, but I actually would have guessed it’d be even more.)

Now I keep wondering about the people who went to the sale. Did they know it was for TV? Did they know it was Oprah? And did they realize that all of the stuff came from just one person?

It wasn’t really the kind of sale I would have liked to go to, since it was all newer stuff that seemed pretty ordinary. But I think if I knew the sale was for some TV show I’d want to go — not for a chance to be on TV so much as just to see how these televised sales are run.

I started getting curious about this a while back watching Clean House. On that show, the hosts convince people to get rid of a bunch of their junk (which is often quite the emotional ordeal), then they sell it all in a yard sale. They always show some of the people who come and buy stuff, often debating over purchases or haggling over prices. I’m just curious how it all works. Do they make everyone who shows up at the sale sign a release? Will they let you just shop and not be on TV or is it a package deal? Are there people who repeatedly seek out these sales — fans of the show, fans of the sales (seems like they let stuff go for cheap), or people looking for a few seconds of fame? And do people ever buy stuff they don’t really want just because they think they might get to be on TV?

While searching for answers to these burning questions, I found an online listing for one of the show’s recent sales. I imagine it may be taken down soon so I’ll just reproduce the text here. I’ve removed the address and date, but I assure you that the rest is just as it was written.

HUGE YARD SALE!!!!! Clean House is coming to your neighborhood! We will be taping an episode of the Style Network’s home makeover TV program at (address, date, and time). Get great deals on Furniture, Baby Clothes, dolls and lots lots more!!! IT’S GOING TO BIG!!!!!! And SUPER AMAZING!!!! You might even find yourself on TV! Clean House host Neicy Nash, will be there!!!

Let me just say that this ad doesn’t exactly exude professionalism. (”IT’S GOING TO BIG!!!!!!” And they misspelled Niecy … ) However, seeing this ad brings up yet another question: does anyone ever lie in their L.A.-area yard sale ads and pretend that their sale is for Clean House (or some other TV show) to try and get more shoppers there?

Oh, the mysteries of televised sales …

When I think of the phrase “thrift store photos” I usually think of the weird kind of pictures you can sometimes find while thrifting. Here’s one stellar example:

(More of that good stuff here.)

Of course, “thrift store photos” can also mean photos depicting thrift stores. I found this link to a recent exhibition of thrift store photos by Brian Ulrich via the ever-fabulous Ars Longa site. The shots are great, ranging from the colorful to the kinda gross.

The exhibition reminds me of a little book I got for Christmas, Thrift Store: the Past & Future Secret Lives of Things. If you’ve spent much time in thrift stores, many of the photos in the book may seem altogether familiar, perhaps too familiar: stacks of board games, necklaces hanging on hooks, lonely dolls … all the kinds of things you come across when perusing thrift store aisles, shown here in one small dose after another until you almost feel like you’ve been in the thrift too long. According to her bio the author/photographer, Emily Larned, is an “avid thrifter,” and the book includes a few short essays about the nature of objects and how they are used, valued, and discarded. The kind of stuff you get to thinking about after your 500th thrift trip or 8000th yard sale.

As far as thrift store art, there’s plenty of documentation out there on artwork that was purchased in thrift stores. I was first introduced to this “genre” via Jim Shaw’s mindblowing 1992 book, Thrift Store Paintings. (After discovering the book I was lucky enough to get to see an exhibit of some of the paintings in San Francisco, similar to the one pictured here. That stuff is even scarier in person.)

Online, you can visit the PSB Gallery of Thrift Store Art and the Hi Art Thrift Store Art Gallery for more scary thrifted paintings than any one person should probably stand to take in. I’ve also seen a few recent examples where people have taken thrifted artworks (sometimes original, sometimes mass-produced) and then altered them to stunning effect (like the examples shown here).

Now, what about paintings (or perhaps scarier, sculptures) that show thrift store scenes? That’s something I haven’t managed to stumble across yet. But I’m sure it’s only a matter of time …

It’s been a while since I’ve blogged. I’ve been busy with a bunch of not-at-all-yard-sale-related activities, including an extended Thanksgiving visit to my parents’ house in Berkeley. I’ve mentioned before that they are longtime yard sale aficionados and started me out right with a healthy love of secondhand treasure hunting in various venues. When I was really little, I don’t remember being toted around to yard sales so much as making regular walks to our neighborhood park, which conveniently also featured a constantly-overflowing freebox. We also made occasional visits to our local Value Village, which were always thrilling for my sister and me. As I got older we started doing the occasional weekend yard-saling tour de Berkeley. Hitting sales was also a regular and much-loved feature of our annual summer visits to grandparents in Florida and New Jersey. (The trove of vintage clothes, ’50s high heels, and rhinestone jewelry I picked up as a young teen in the early ’80s! I feel jealous just thinking about it, even though it was me who bought it. But most of that stuff is long gone or destroyed, and I would be thrilled to come across those kinds of things now, especially at the ludicrously cheap prices I paid then.)

Anyway, as you can imagine, my parents’ house is full of interesting items, and I decided to take a few pictures to document some of their yard sale scores. Of course, there is so much weird and old stuff in their house that I wasn’t always sure whether something was bought at a yard sale, was a hand-me-down from one of my grandparents, or was just something my parents had purchased decades ago and kept around all this time. But they verified for me that all of the following items did indeed come from yard sales.

First, we have what is one of my favorite things in their house, period.

My mom purchased these two ladies at a sale she stumbled upon while out walking the dog. They were $1 each and were supposedly once used in a magic show. They are shown here in their summertime location in front of the fireplace; in fall they move to the hallway, greeting visitors as they walk through the front door.

This lovely (if a bit beat-up) lamp was purchased by my dad for the princely sum of $2.

In case you are wondering what’s going on there, that’s my dad holding up a jacket for shade, since my photos were coming out all glare-y. I also took a close-up of the base, and only just now noticed the nicely coordinating figures in the background. I will take a wild guess that they came from some other yard sale.

Moving out to the back yard, we have these two interesting oblong faces hanging on a fence.

My mom bought these (knowing my dad would love them for yard art) for a buck or two apiece. Amazingly, when I was making the yard sale rounds with her last August, we came upon another one of their kind: same exact shape, with an even more elaborate paint job. It was priced at $5, and would have joined its brethren in the back yard if someone else hadn’t already been in the process of purchasing it.

A recent addition to the back yard is this statue.

Those with kids (or those who read kids’ books) may recognize him as Good Dog Carl. (Now that I’m looking at Carl a little more closely I’m not sure if that’s really who he’s supposed to be, but that’s what we’d all assumed, and as far as I’m concerned he’s close enough.) Every time I walked outside I would automatically and instinctively flinch, thinking there was some big dog in the yard, even though I already knew it was just a statue.

Finally, stowed away in the basement are two of these exotic floor chairs.

My sister picked them up at a sale, then decided she doesn’t really have a place for them at her house. So here they are, waiting for another go-round in the yard sale catch and release program (it was in reference to these very chairs that I first heard her use that term). Which shouldn’t be a problem since my mom has a yard sale every summer (when my dad’s out of town — he loves going to yard sales, but cannot stand having them).

Not pictured: approximately 10,000 other items purchased at yard sales over the years.

Meghan and I rode to the Bitch-N-Swap together and after making about five wrong turns trying to get to Leslie’s house, we finally made it there. We told her that she should have had signs up with arrows that just said “Bitch.” (I’m sure her suburban neighbors would’ve loved that.)

I knew that Leslie and some friends had spent a good part of the previous day setting things up, but I was still amazed at how organized everything was. It looked like her living room had been completely emptied out to make room for swap stuff. Everything was nearly arranged in sections, with handy bright pink signs indicating what type of stuff could be found there, like “Frederick’s of Hello Kittie” for lingerie, “Home Despot” for household items, “Isle of Man” for all things testosterone-ish, and more. Neither of us had remembered to bring our camera, but thankfully Leslie’s friend Giselle agreed to be pressed into service documenting the swap for us; all of these photos were taken by her. (Thanks again, Giselle!)

I thought it was very appropriate to see “How to Conquer Clutter” among the tons of books.

In the center of the room was an enormous mound of clothes, which always had at least four people digging through it and which somehow didn’t seem to get any smaller as the swap went on.

I pulled out a couple of t-shirts for my husband, and a couple of dresses and skirts which I later rejected and threw back into the pile. After making a couple of passes around the room’s perimeter (and a couple more digs through the clothing heap) I headed to the kitchen, where I enjoyed a fresh-brewed cup of “Hong Kong Milk Tea” and some really good cookies. There was also a “chill-out room” where exhausted swappers were camped out watching cheesy movies.

As Meghan and I took a load of stuff to our car we saw someone carrying in a painting which truly horrified us. Even scarier, it was a swap veteran: it’d come to a previous swap and been taken home by someone who intended to give it as a gift. Not surprisingly, the gift was rejected, and so back it came. Here is Leslie posing with this masterpiece.

I don’t think anyone grabbed it and I’m really not sure what its fate will be now … nor do I really want to know!

Thanks in part to the Forbidden Items List, the general quality level was pretty decent. I was tempted by a lot of items that were kinda cool, but which I just didn’t really need, like cocktail shakers, funky ashtrays, and quirky zines. Due to my amazing restraint I only ended up bringing a few items home: the aforementioned t-shirts; a pair of shoes which I thought looked like bowling shoes, and only later realized were indeed actual bowling shoes; one interesting-looking book (the title of which I’ve already forgotten); one back issue of Bitch magazine; one Halloween pumpkin candle-holder; and a few stickers and other little trinkets for my daughter. Meghan ended up with a couple of bags full of books, clothes, and other items, including what I think was her score of the day, a beat-up but quite stylish black and leopard vintage handbag.

Even though a lot of stuff was taken away, there was a scary amount of stuff left over. Here is just some of the unclaimed stuff that was bagged up and taken to a thrift store afterwards.

It’s been almost two weeks since the swap. Tragically, Leslie is still dealing with the leftover items. I think she deserves a Craptastic Medal of Honor for putting this crazy event together! I hope her sanity is still intact by the time everything is out of her house.

Last Sunday our pal (and occasional guest star) Leslie hosted one of her regular “Bitch-N-Swap” events. She’s been doing these for a few years and invites all her friends to bring stuff they don’t want and take stuff they do want in a crazed free-for-all frenzy. Experience has taught her to get increasingly strict about what is and is not allowed at the swap, and she’s put together a useful — and hilarious! — “forbidden items list.” It’s a pretty funny round-up of Least Wanted Items. I laugh every time I read it and Leslie has graciously allowed us to reproduce it here.

Bitch-N-Swap Forbidden Items List

ALL swap items must be clean enough to be snuggled directly against your vagina/mangina.

One person’s trash may be another man’s treasure, but the following “treasures” are FORBIDDEN at the BNS. (ALL of this stuff has been brought to past swaps, it is always here when everyone leaves, the thrifts won’t take much of this, and I’ve had to pay disposal fees.)

Anyone bringing the following items will be ejected immediately!

General Restrictions
Perfume, cologne, after-shave, air fresheners - all liquid chemical scents. Due to allergies and some asthmatic swappers, chemical scents are not permitted in the house either in containers or on your skin.

ODORS: Items that are permeated with mildew, smoke, pet, or perfume odors.

STAINED CLOTHING: No rust, grime, grease, pet hair-encrusted, presidential snake juice stained, or that sort of thing.

ANYTHING that is isn’t clean enough to store in your own lingerie or man-panties drawer is not permitted at the swap. Leftover clothing is donated to a food/clothing bank and must be clean and in good condition.

Anything decorated with the aid of a glue gun or puffy paint is forbidden.

Anything decorated with the following motifs: Disney characters, teddy bears, angels, geese, cows, corporate marketing logos, stars and stripes or American flags is forbidden. If this is your thing, Goodwill is calling you.

Tobacco products/drug paraphernalia. Again, allergies/asthma, it’s smoke-free here.

Forbidden Items by Category

Baby/Toddler/Kiddie Supplies: Car seats, pacifiers, larger plastic equipment, sippy cups, plastic dishware, Little Tykes items, BIG toys or play sets (anything over 16 inches).

Baskets/Straw/Wicker/Cornhusk: No exceptions, really. Don’t even think of bringing any of it. There’s already enough kindling here.

Book/Media/Office Supply Restrictions:

• AAA Tour Guides & maps.
• Audio tapes of any kind or size.
• Dictionaries, Encyclopedias, Price Guides, computer/software books.
• Home-recorded or blank video tapes.
• Textbooks (OK if vintage or containing amusing clip art).
• Photo Albums & BINDERS

Clothing Restrictions:

• All post-1979 garments must be in good condition. That means no fading, tears, holes, stains, pit fade, heavy pilling, poorly done repairs (including use of duct tape), or very faded fabric. The exception: wool sweaters with holes & vintage garments with salvageable parts for quilters, felters, and knitters.
• DOCKERS ANYTHING.
• No garments that are coated or embedded with pet hair or mystery fuzz.
• Graduation caps & gowns.
• Hats –STRAW, cowboy, Santa, large-brimmed, hard-hats, costume hats, or cheap costume wigs.
• Event, marathon, or sports team T-shirts.
• Lingerie or exercise wear that is completely trashed, stretched out, the spandex has rotted, or it no longer holds anything up or in.
• Shoes/boots/sandals/socks must be in very good condition or better. Visible and olfactory evidence of foot funk really turns most swappers off, particularly with sandals and flip flops.

Corporate Logos: Proceed with extreme caution. Generally Microsoft, Group Health, Boeing, and other logo-emblazoned give-away marketing materials are unloved both by the original recipients and swappers. Thrift stores and landfills are overflowing with this stuff. Please consider how useful it will be to another swapper and if the corporate logo generates warm-n-fuzzy feelings and/or laughter.

Cosmetics/Hair/Jewelry/Supplements/OTC Medication Restrictions:

• Any cosmetic item that is very used, less than 60% remains at the bottom of the container, or is spoiled, disintegrated, melted, dirty, crusty, or has the labeling info worn off the bottle/package.
• Contact lens and glasses cases.
• 80s & 90s plastic headbands, hair bows, barrettes, combs, and hair ornaments.
  Expired and/or opened supplements and OTC medications.

Dishware/Kitchen/Food Container Restrictions:

• Unwashed or stained dishware or cookware (honestly, someone brought unwashed coffee-encrusted cups to the May ‘06 swap and cookie sheets that wouldn’t have come clean with a sand blaster).
• Chipped/cracked/broken dishware or glassware.
• Coffee mugs: Proceed with caution and avoid dull corporate logos.
• Tupperware and plastic containers with melt marks, stains, and warping.
• NO Decorative food packaging tins. (However, bring on the lunchboxes!)
• Plastic travel mugs, drink bottles, and Big Gulp type cups.
• Cutlery trays: Plastic and coated wire.
• Dish drying racks.
• Travel mugs that are missing lids.
• Winery tour or corporate logo stemware.
• Plain ice cube trays (fun shapes and metal are OK).
• Pot holders and oven mitts (vintage or silicone OK).
• Placemats.

Electronics/Computer Restrictions:

• ALL Computers, keyboards, and accessories are forbidden.
• All electronics or small appliances in poor/damaged condition or missing cords.
• Large appliances.
• Fax machines, printers, and printer cartridges.
• Televisions / Monitors.
• Mysterious cords and misc. parts
• Cell phones and cell phone accessories.
• Landline telephones unless vintage (pre-1975).
• Headphones.
• Phone cords, speaker wire, other cables.
• Digital clocks (plug in variety).
• Calculators.

Eyewear - Glasses cases and contact lens cases.

Furniture – any/all (No room at the inn).

Linens - Restrictions:

• Blankets: acrylic or worn/stained/pilled or infested with holes.
• Mattress pads and covers.
• PILLOWS: decorative throw pillows unless vintage or leopard print.
• Sheets should be bagged up and the size noted.
• PLEASE BRING ugly/stained/holey towels for the SPCA

Milk Crates

Scrap booking supplies

Solvents, Chemicals, Febreeze, Pesticides, Draino, and other hazardous liquids. http://www.govlink.org/hazwaste/house/products/list.cfm

Suitcases (even little overnight suitcases), luggage, and garment bags.

Toys: anything that is soiled, moldy, or severely damaged. Beanie Babies, Happy Meal toys, plush toys (unless vintage, handmade, or dog-safe - no pellet filling or plastic bits on those), oversized toys, and jigsaw puzzles.

Window Treatments: Mini-blinds, Roman shades, & 1980s curtains.

People started dropping things off a few days early and sadly, many of the forbidden items turned up anyway! I think she took 9 large trash bags full of Dockers (!), corporate-logo items, and other unswappables over to a clothing drop-box before the swap even happened.

I was pretty excited to go to the swap since I’ve been hearing about them for years but have always been unable to make it for one reason or another. Did it live up to my expectations? All will be revealed in my next post!

Fall is here. Rain is here. Yard sales … well, they’re still here, but not as much, and certainly not as much on my mind. I went to just one sale last weekend and all I bought was a 25-cent hammer. Not exactly exciting blog material, hmmm?

Meghan is off in sunshine-y Texas right now, and I think she’ll be giving a report on that after she’s back. In the meantime, here are a few links I’ve come across recently that are worth checking out.

• Yard sale movies? We’ve come across sites for two of ‘em: Yard Sale: The Movie and Zen in the Art of Yardsailing. Both look great — I’m dying to see them, but as far as I can tell they aren’t really in circulation. Anyone have any scoop on these?
• This is a pretty entertaining article about one man’s junking-method-of-choice: swap meets. This guy is a hardcore devotee (i.e., one of our kind). Great pictures, and funny stuff — I cracked up at the story about the record swap where the score-hunting squirrels started showing up earlier and earlier, until they were all just meeting up the night before.
• I Don’t Give A Damn is a true tale of a yard sale I’m really glad I didn’t go to. Small underground theatre companies, you have just found your newest short play.
• Over at Sweetheartville, there’s been a mind-boggling rash of amazing thrift and garage sale scores. Dang, woman!
• Finally, I cannot believe that this drool-worthy Heywood-Wakefield dining set was scored at a Salvation Army for a mere 39 bucks. Astounding! Her collection of ’50s lamps is also quite impressive.

That’s all for now … we’ll have more bloggy fun soon!

There was a nice mention of our blog in the comments of this post about online yard sale maps from Metroblogging Portland. (We haven’t tried any of these newfangled mapping dealybobs yet. I keep thinking we should, but I guess I’m just lazy. Plus, there are some sales that we deliberately skip based on their description, and I don’t know how easy it will be to weed these out. I guess I will get around to finding out sooner or later.)

Anyway, I had to laugh when I read this remark about us:

What I can’t figure out is what they do with all their finds. I don’t know if they run a store, or just collect things like those crazy people who have to clear out paths in their homes through the piles of newspapers and styrofoam meat liners that have been building up for years.

Well, we certainly don’t run a store, although we do resell some of our finds through various venues (often referred to as “supporting our habit”). And we are not crazy hoarders — granted, both of us do have more stuff in our homes than is strictly necessary by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not like we’re anywhere close to this.

So, what is the deal? The junk in our trunk photos don’t lie: we bring home a lotta stuff. The reality is that much of it ends up going through what my sister termed the “yard sale catch and release program.” (Genius!) It goes something like this:

1. Buy something at a yard sale.
2. Bring it home.
3. Keep it around for a while.
4. Sell it at another yard sale.

This isn’t about reselling for profit. Occasionally I’ll price something a little higher than what I paid for it, but more often than not it’s just about the same. Knowing that something can go into a future yard sale does provide some (not entirely logical) justification for some purchases I’m not sure about. Meghan’s been known to say “Hey, if I decide I don’t want it, someone will buy it at my next sale.” And she’s usually right. I have even bought things already knowing that they will likely end up in my next sale, but somehow deciding to get them anyway. Maybe just because even if it’s not something I need to keep forever, it’s nice to spend a little bit of time with an interesting (if not objectively valuable) treasure. Until I’m done with it and ready to send it on its way.

This might be slightly demented, but we are definitely not the only ones participating in this program. More than once we’ve sold something at one of our sales, only to see the very same item again later — at the yard sale of the person who bought it from us.

Why? I don’t know. It’s kinda fun though.

When I was at the “Eclectic Vintage Freakout” sale in Berkeley last Saturday, I came across something that really made me laugh. It made the sellers laugh, too, but they were ready to get it out of their house. It was only a quarter, but I decided not to buy it, asking instead if I could just take a picture. They said sure — although they did try to convince me that I really wanted it. I told them I’d give them 50 cents to take the picture and not bring it home, but kindly they didn’t make me pay up.

I am having a teensy bit of regret at leaving it behind, but I think just having the picture is really good enough.

It’s not just the wacky gag-gift nature of this item that cracks me up. That hair! That pose! That wacky copywriting! Ah, what a fine piece of ’80s debris. I didn’t take it out of the box, but I think it’s basically some kind of two-balloon apparatus that you can inflate on demand.

My almost-sincere apologies to anyone who ended up here because they were looking for real super boobs.

Do you remember about a month ago when I ended up with a bunch of junk in my trunk, including a book chock-full of extremely demented and disturbing decorations to make out of tinfoil?

Well! I did not know how much that book got around. Sweetheartville left us a comment that she’d seen the book and was appropriately horrified (particularly by the mermaid). And our pal and occasional guest-star Leslie told me she had a copy, too. Not only that, but she said she owned a painting based on one of the photos. This seemed too good to be true, and I demanded proof. Which I am so thrilled to share with you now.

Here’s the original photo from the book:

And here’s the painting:

The fact that this painting exists is fantastic. Even better is that it was painted by Lamont Mudd, local artist and occasional-dude-about-town. I’m already quite familiar with his work, since we actually have a couple of his paintings in our house, too. (None based on tinfoil crafts, however. You can see one of them here - it’s the third one down.)

Lamont’s paintings are somewhat elusive these days, but rumor has it that they sometimes turn up at Sugartown Vintage. I don’t know if he takes commissions for custom work based on your own favorite horrifying tinfoil art project, but I suppose you could ask!

We were excited to discover that a Japanese blog, Retro Junk, is linking to our site! It looks like a fun blog, judging from the photos in some of the other posts. Of course, we can’t actually read it, but I did notice that they mentioned our post about signs that a sale is probably going to suck. Meghan had the bright idea to run it through an online translator, and this is what it came up with:

The original post did not mention leprosy, but I would have to agree that it would be a pretty bad omen for a sale.

We’re stoked about the link. Hello to any Japanese visitors! I’m sure the post makes much more sense in its original version, but the bad translation is pretty entertaining. And I gotta admit - I like also to look at the trophy of the person.

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 …