Many of the shorts and tee-shirts I wear are purchased from second-hand stores located around town. I can’t fathom paying $40 for a pair of brand name shorts from a retailer, when a broken-in generic pair can be had for $6.
The other day I was out shopping for jeans, and one of these thrift stores appeared to have marked up their apparel. I asked a clerk why and she could only shrug her shoulders and half heartedly reply, “Inflation?”
That made me chuckle because the “stuff” they sell is donated. I suppose if I was to ask a manager, I’d be told the cost to operate has risen, such as wages, electricity, water, insurance, and the like. Not to quickly change directions here, but stuff is what this story’s mainly about.
I’ve been asked on more than one occasion, “Why do you guys have so much unnecessary stuff?” Normally, I reply back that I don’t know, rather than go into a long-winded spiel.
The number one reason my wife and I have lots of stuff, is that I don’t like dealing with people where selling it is concerned. It’s not that we couldn’t use the extra cash, far from this. My experience with selling stuff never turned out to be fun. Joleen says that attempting to sell stuff turns me into a grumpy old man.
Thirty years ago, we had a garage sale and I was the one pricing things. I marked them down to the point where we were basically giving stuff away, yet people still dropped by and offered much less. When I had cassettes marked for $1 and was offered .50 cents by one guy, it made hair on the back of my neck stand at attention.
After all this time, I still think back to that “garage sailor” as they’re sometimes referred to. “Garage sailing” is the act of traveling from garage sale to garage sale, thus garage sailors are the people partaking in this activity.
My daughter and her family were in town during Thanksgiving, and she wondered why we still had a highchair—along with a pack-n-play for infants. All five of our grandchildren are long beyond needing these items.
I told Miranda I didn’t want to deal with a bunch of irritating calls, and planned on donating the chair and crib when I got around to it. She asked if she could try peddling them while they were visiting—with me gladly informing her, “Have at it!”
In the back of my mind, I believed it’d turn out to be a fiasco worth writing about.
The highchair was like new, and my daughter listed it on Facebook for $10. The first caller wanted to know why it was being sold for so cheap, implying that there must be something wrong. Miranda informed her there was nothing defective about the chair at all, yet the woman still passed on even looking at it.
Evidently, not a frugal woman, I suppose she was looking for a more expensive one to buy, believing in the old adage, “You get what you pay for!”
This highchair eventually sold, after my son-in-law, out of a heartfelt desire to make sure one particular caller got it, drove six miles across town and delivered the thing. Dennis said that the older woman purchasing it for a grandchild couldn’t thank him enough.
Hearing that story, my grumpy old man attitude began to soften, with me believing that perhaps buyers had changed over time. That thought only lasted a day.
Miranda had taken our pack-n-play crib out of its large box and assembled it, taking numerous photos afterwards and placing them online. After the crib was listed, a youngish sounding gal called saying that she desperately wanted it, and that she’d be by the next day at a certain prearranged time.
The following day she called back, asking if it could be held another day. During this time, other interested callers had been told that it was sold. To make a long story short, this woman turned out to be a flake. She rudely never called back and wouldn’t answer her phone.
Rather than go through this same ordeal with the pack-n-play after Dennis, Miranda, and grandchildren left for Minnesota, I asked that she remove it beforehand from the Facebook site. The pack-n-play was disassembled, with it going back inside the large box. It can stay there forever as far as I’m concerned. Who knows, I might eventually get a puppy or kitten that’d like to play in it.
Friends and family have advised me that I should have a garage sale and get rid of everything in one swoop. I’m seriously thinking about taking their advice. Things will be done much differently than the way I went about it thirty years ago. Garage sailors will be talking about my final garage sale in Lake Havasu City for years to come.
Just like some stores and restaurants have done, I’ll price everything through the ceiling this go-around. Joleen and I no longer use cassette tapes yet do have a slew of CDs. $30 apiece sounds about right. Some Tupperware plastic bowls from the 70s should be worth $10 each. Undoubtedly, savvy buyers will ask why our junk is so high.
“Inflation!,” will be the first word out of my mouth. I’ll make sure to go on and explain further,
“The cost to put on a garage sale has risen considerably. With electricity going up, water and sewer already there, including insurance and refuse, along with our cable television, unfortunately, I have to mark up the goods to help defray this increase. Of course, my time isn’t free either.”
Seeing the look on people’s faces afterwards will be priceless. They’d undoubtedly be like mine after getting our $42 ticket the other morning for breakfast.
I might not sell anything, that is unless that woman looking for an expensive used highchair stops by. Regardless, this sounds like the perfect event to freely pass along some of my garage sale grumpiness to prospective buyers.
I hear tell from a good friend, that such grumpiness is highly contagious amongst the older crowd, especially men!
I like to write junk... 