One Man's Trash is ... Fabulous!

Don't you just love getting up at the break of dawn on Saturday mornings?  What do you mean "no way?"  If your sleeping in on Saturday mornings, you don't know what you're missing!  There is a whole wonderful world of fantastic bargains and one-of-a-kind simply cool stuff out there, not to mention excitement, action, and high drama out on the streets of otherwise quiet neighborhoods in the early a.m.  I get up early every morning, but only on Saturday do I jump out of bed at 5:30a.m. smiling, (I guess that is sleeping in for me, because weekdays I get up at 5), so happy the alarm rang and Saturday morning has finally arrived.  I wait all week for this hour!  Garage sale time is here again!

My partner in crime is Alysa.  We have been "saleing" (I know.  People hear us talking about saleing and they think we have a yacht) together for many years, and have spent most Saturday mornings together almost since we met.  It is our time.  Both of us have such crazy lives, with huge callings, and 11 kids between us.  Saturday mornings are our time together.  Sometimes you have to carve out time for yourself and your friends, even if it is while your family is snoozing or watching cartoons.  If is wasn't for our saleing time, we'd hardly have time to see each other.

 It is kind of and obsession for both of us.  OK, let me rephrase that.  It is an addiction.  There, I've said it. Hello.  My name is Rachelle, and I am addicted to digging through the used and unwanted stuff of complete strangers.  I am very, very sick.  And I have been responsible for dragging many other people that I love, including my best friend, and my own parents, down with me.  Staci, Maria, Melissa - I have spied them all out on the trail, away from their warm beds, dark circles under their eyes from lack of sleep, unable to control their urge to dig, DIG, DIG!  But I am not sorry.  If I have ever influenced anyone to go on the hunt, I feel I have done them a great service.  They have been enlightened.  Hey, as far as addictions go, if you are going to have one, this is the best, because you can only do it one morning, maybe two, a week.  Other addicts can smoke, drink, gamble, eat, and shop any day at any time.  But garage sales are limited to one morning a week.  True, we are continually going through withdrawals for the rest of the week, but we are still functioning- for the most part.  Many might not even know we are addicts, except when someone says "cute skirt," and I have to respond, "Thanks. J. Jill. 25 cents." (For real!  I had that conversation tonight.  The skirt I am wearing right now really is J. Jill, and I really did get it for a quarter this very morning, and it really is cute.)  Why do I do that?  I have to remind myself that normal people aren't as impressed by such a thing, and might even be turned off by it.  I guess it kind of defeats the purpose of wearing designer clothes if everyone knows you got it out of a cardboard box on a lawn rather than Sax Fifth Avenue.  I have no pride, apparently.  I am the hunter, and the cute skirt is my big moose head hanging in my parlor.  Other hunters can appreciate it and admire it, while non-hunters just think it is gross.

Saleing has warped my mind in other ways as well.  I have completely lost all sense of the value of the dollar.  I would bomb on the Price is Right.  I have a hard time buying things in actual stores, and malls make me crazy!  It is like I have gone to another country with a different currency.  Mall prices make no sense!  I need a currency conversion chart that converts real dollars to garage sale dollars, and vice versa.  The only thing malls are good for is to find out the value of the stuff I already got at garage sales.  That makes me happy.  Who buys that stuff in malls anyway?  Someone does, and I am glad, and I want them to keep buying it and then selling it at garage sales.  They are all enabling me in my addiction.  But looking at in another way, the real value is not what they charge in stores, but what one is willing to pay for it at a garage sale.  A $40 blouse I may pass up at $3 but snatch it up at $2, so the real value is $2, right?  If that same blouse was on a clearance rack at a store for $20, or even $10, I might snatch it up and think I got a great deal, but I will pass on it if it is $3 at a garage sale.  Warped thinking, maybe, but money is limited to cash on hand on Saturday mornings (no, the ATM is only a last resort.  It take too much valuable time.)  I might need that extra buck at the next garage sale, you just never know.  And when the cash is gone, the fun is over for another whole week!  Back to the topic of value.  If something has the actual tag showing the store price, then is is much more valuable because the evidence of you skill as a hunter is right there on the big game itself.  Tags are a premium, making items even double what they'd be worth without them.  For instance, the skirt Alysa wore tonight is just super darn darling with the tie in the back.  It is a CABI and still had the price tag - 100 bucks!  Because it had tags, I was willing to pay a premium $5 for it.  Something has to be pretty special for me to spend that much on it Saturday morning, but that skirt was special, and Alysa is special, so I felt justified in my splurge.  Love ya, Lyssy!

So here is just a sampling of some of our finds in the last few weeks.  Summer is over, and the saleing is getting good.  Today Alysa and I each got a pile of clothes, mostly J. Jill, and J. Crew for a quarter each.  Alysa's pile was much bigger than mine, but she does Ebay.  It's her thing.  But I usually buy almost as much as her, and I don't Ebay.  It is all for me!  Yikes.  Today I also got my Halloween costume which I won't tell you what it is, you'll have to wait and see.  But here's a hint - It won't make me 'popular' but I will be 'defying gravity' for sure.  And it doesn't take any 'brains' at all to see that Dennis is a little 'hung up' about his costume that is a companion to mine.  I am so excited!!!  Anyway, back to my log roll of great buys.  Last week I bought my boys a bunch of nice quicksilver shirts, two quick silver wallets, and quicksilver hat, and a quicksilver watch.  My boys LOVE Quicksilver.  Christmas!!!  Alysa has been finding a bunch of great stuff.  She is a seasoned hunter.  She beat me to the whole set of Pirates of the Caribbean large action figures.  There were about 20 of them, $5.  When it come to one of us finding something we both want, we have learned to be happy for the victor and just let it go.  Let it go and smile.  That has saved our friendship on many occasions.

But we don't just buy clothes and stuff for our families.  We also come across just simply cool stuff.  Just two weeks ago we found a whole stash of antique cameras, many with leather cases, for just $2 each.  This picture is only some of them, there were several more in the car. Some were more that 100 years old, and many were is good condition.  They are all so fun.  Check out my next post to see what I did with mine.

Sometimes we find fun stuff just for us.  Look at my totally exciting find from that same day.  Real nunchuks!  I was so excited!  Other people passed these puppies right up, but I LOVE nunchuks (what mother of six boys dosen't?)  My other nunchuks are foam.  These are cooler, but hurt a lot more when I hit mysef.  They'll just toughen me up, right?  Man, that was a fun morning!

Sometimes we find a special surprise.  Last week I bought this.  Yep, it is cool - a shelf built out of an old stained glass window with crystal doorknob hangers.  I made this.  I mean I built this cool thing a few years ago, sold it to someone, and they had a garage sale and were selling it so I bought it back.  I'll sell it again if you like it.  I already have one in my guest bathroom.  Funny to find something I made myself at someone else's garage sale.  Once, my mom and I found a centerpiece that we had made for my sister's wedding, there was no mistaking it - but we had no idea who those people were who were selling it, and they had no idea where they go it.  Weird, huh?

Sometime we find something that we have no idea what to do with, but is just way too cool to pass up.  Last week I found this antique carnival wheel-of-fortune thing. It is bold and graphic and simply fantastic.  $5.  It still works. I think I am going to call it the wheel-of-chores, and assign a chore to each number and let my kids spin away.  What do you think I should do with it?

Of course, not every morning is so bountiful.  Some mornings are just bleak. We have seen it all over the years, and we have a lot of stories and wisdom to share.  We are fast, we are picky, and we know what too look for and when to stop looking and bail.  Onto the next sale.  We don't buy junk - there is too much quality stuff out there to ever settle for junk  We are seriously considering writing a book, like "The Girlfriends' Guide to Garage Sales," or maybe doing a web cast or something.  We want educate others on how to garage sale, and more importantly, how to have a garage sale.  This world would be a better place if people were educated on proper saleing technique and etiquette.  Even if we got one seller to make the printing on their signs large and dark enough to actually read, it will all have been worth it. It is a too edged sword, though.  We want to help people become great garage salers, but we also don't need any more competition our on the garage sale trail.  I don't suppose there is a way to mark our territory, is there?

So another Saturday has come and gone, and I spent every dollar, dime, and nickel I had today.  (You'd be amazed what we can get with those last few stray coins.)  Next Saturday is so far away!  But next Saturday is General Conference, and we always have great luck on conference Saturdays.  It is Satan tempting us to stay out away from our TVs, but if there is one thing Alysa and I love even more than saleing, it is General Conference.  Looking forward to next weekend!  Until then, I will white knuckle it through another week, and try to live life as a normal non-addicted person.  If...I...can...just...hold...on...'til...Saturday......