Garage Sale Trail

So the past four days have been pretty hectic for me. I had an overdue assignment to finish, ran a 13km race, put on a garage sale and attended a wedding. I think I need another weekend just to recover from the past weekend! The most taxing of those four things was the garage sale. I should have done it another weekend to spread the load a bit but May 5th was actually the official 'Garage Sale Trail', a day where you can register your garage sale and get a bit more publicity around the community then just a few dodgy signs on some local poles.

I'm moving overseas next year so I need to get rid of everything - the sewing machine, fabric, my lovely Fleur Wood dresses, even Daisy's dog lead had to go. I'm slowly working towards only having basics to sell at the end of the ten months which meant this garage sale was going to be epic! It took two weeks of sifting through boxes of stuff in storage, ironing clothes and dusting off books to get everything together for the big day. Our living room looked like a scene from hoarders, or my mum's shed. I can't believe that I had accumulated so many THINGS over the past few years since moving out of the parents place. I have a pizza cutter, a cake cutter, cocktail mixer, two sets of scales, salad spinner and so so so many decorative knick knacks that it took probably 20 trips up and down the stairs to bring everything down. It felt like we were moving house! 

A nights work of bringing everything down
before the sale. Running a business is hard.

So on that freezing Saturday morning, I opened up and garage to the world and luckily for me, the world wanted my useless crapola. I had one lovely lady who said she was there 7am on the dot and was disappointed I hadn't yet opened up (and Kevin said there wouldn't be anyone about at that time!). Despite sitting in the garage all day in the freezing cold, it was a very successful day. We had some music playing and one of my neighbours and their kids came to join me to sell some of their baby toys (so they can get new ones of course), so there was a nice party feel to it. 

Most customers were really friendly and almost everyone left with at least one of two of my things. Though who could blame them with my bargain prices of $1-10. We made over $600 (90% my things, 10% Kevin's things - though he did suggest we should halve the profits, the cheek) but more importantly we didn't have to lug too much stuff back up three flights of stairs!

Looking around the apartment, it doesn't actually look like anything is really missing so it really was just extra stuff that we didn't need! As tempting as it is to spend my big pile of coins (I have $300 in gold coins alone - I could almost swim in it like Scrooge McDuck) it's going safely away in the the world trip fund and the next step now is to hit up Ebay, Etsy and Gumtree to get rid of the rest. I feel lighter already.