We had an epic yard sale last weekend. Prepping for that was more time consuming than I had imagined. Sorting, organizing and pricing things takes forever. As if that wasn’t bad enough, I was not too optimistic that we would make any money. Historically, my yard sales have been less than lucrative. Often I spend the day outside getting sunburnt while people drive right by and make me sad. Weirdly it hurts my feelings that my castoffs are no one else’s treasure.

This year I was more organized about yard saling than ever. We put signs up all over, advertised on Nextdoor and on Facebook Marketplace and I put teasers on various social media sites the week before to create interest. Regardless, our success was likely due to the insane amount of crap that we had to get rid of.

We held the sale Friday and Saturday. I have always heard that Fridays attract the serious yard salers – the folks that make a living re-selling things they find. And on Saturdays you get the families, lookey-loos and wanderers with nothing else to do. This definitely seemed to hold true for us. I received lots of advice both wanted and unwanted from professional yard salers all day Friday. Nuggets such as you’ll never get that price for this bag and people don’t buy lladro anymore (while they turned out to be accurate) were not exactly helpful. However, I did meet a lovely re-seller named Dawn who owns a vintage shop. She bought quite a few things at the sale and is coming over this week to check out some of my mom’s chochkis and jewelry that didn’t made it into the sale because I forgot all about them.

Of course it rained hard Saturday morning. With each thunder clap, I felt less and less optimistic about our sale. But by 11am, the rain stopped and people started arriving. We ended up making over $1000 across the 2 days which is a yard sale record for us. But more importantly, we got rid of a shit ton of stuff. I did not allow anything (well almost anything) back in the house when the sale concluded. The majority went straight to Goodwill – not my favorite place to donate to but after 6pm on a Saturday they were the only ones open. And truthfully, I knew if I brought stuff back into the house, I would be tempted to find items to keep.

I have a hard time giving things away. My mom was convinced that everything she owned was worth a fortune. This belief has trickled down to me and even though I rationally know this not to be true, I can’t seem to shake the feeling that I will be the idiot that unwittingly donates the million dollar piece of art or jewelry to a random thrift store. Some lucky sod is going to end up on The Antique Roadshow with my mom’s vintage wooden washboard in one hand and a check for $1,000,000 in the other.

Overall, I consider the yard sale a huge success. And yet the house is still inundated with stuff. It’s overwhelming and is causing me many a sleepless night. It seems like the more I get rid of the more crap I find…… I am like a hamster stuck in her wheel on a treadmill going no where. Except I am going somewhere….Costa Rica….. in just 43 days…..I may need to have another yard sale.