Well I missed posting an entry yesterday. Tina’s and my day was consumed by the Mei Hua Chinese School’s Garage Sale Fundraiser. Tina pretty much coordinated the entire event. The school doesn’t have a strong parent organization system in place, and we’re pretty new to the group so getting this event off the ground had some pretty tough challenges to it. And of course it rained hard all morning and the temperature hovered around 50 degrees. Not great weather for hanging around outside!

We had our own garage sale about a month ago. This is not something we do regularly. That one was our second in 25 years. I always think that going to garage sales on a regular basis would be fun, but we’re not really interested in bringing random stuff into our home. Particularly not items that other people have already decided they don’t want or need. If they don’t want or need it, chances are I don’t either. I know there’s great stuff out there to be found but it’s like diving for pearls.

Running a garage sale is funny thing to do. You really meet all kinds of people. Lots of young mothers looking for baby items, people who seem a bit down on their luck looking for basic clothing or household items, apparently well-to-do folks that are looking for ??? I have no idea, and families out letting their young children blow their pocket money on treasures culled from the dregs of playbox fodder outgrown by other kids.

Then there are the people that show up a full hour before the sale opens to get first crack at things. These are the pros that are looking for specific types of items. I saw a guy with a little laser barcode scanner go through all the books. I guess he was looking up market value on them. I have no idea what others were looking for. They pass through the items with an air of indifference, offer no small talk and quickly leave if the desired object isn’t present. Or just as often pick up an item you were certain would never sell, and give you full price before heading off to their car. I guess we should have priced that thing higher?

It cracks me up to watch people carefully consider a $1.50 purchase as if they were investing $100s. To be fair I suppose it may not be the money, but the internal struggle of committing to taking on one more piece of junk in their lives. Fortunately for the Chinese School there were a good number of people willing to take the chance and we did pretty well.