Our Annual Garage Sale

Every year, on the first November of the month, we hold a garage sale. Several families pool their junk at my Mom's house. It always winds up landing on Dave and I's wedding anniversary weekend(it is actually today!).
Every year, at the end of the day, my stepdad Ed and I have had the same conversation. I walk in, say thanks a lot for letting us have it here! And he says, was it worth it? And I say, no, of course not, remind me next year never to do this again. And then he says, to my Mom, next year, if you say you're going to have another garage sale, I'll shoot you.
But every year, I fall back into the same old trap! I seem to forget how much WORK it all is and how much DIRT it involves and how I actually have two small children, and it is LUNACY to expect them to make it from seven until four with no one actually being available to watch them. (the first year, Jonathan was literally days old. what was I thinking?)
My husband, who is unfailingly cheerful, said as we were leaving, well, I think that was a success! We brought three carloads over and are only leaving with one.
One thing I will never understand about garage sales is people who do the drive-by: they cruise by at 30 miles an hour and sort of gawk at your stuff, and somehow determine whether or not they want to stop. I always wonder, what is it they are looking for? What criteria do they have to decide whether to spend five minutes pawing through our junk versus, say the neighbor down the street?
Also, you have to understand the garage sale customer. I am talking about the out every Saturday morning-cut you off while driving-speedwalk up to the driveway-elbow you out of the way-fanny pack wearing type of person. If you put a bucket of items out marked FREE!, you would probably not get rid of that stuff. If you put fifty cents on something, you are telling them, hey, this really is not worth anything to me, so why should you want to take it home? No matter how low you price your items, they will always ask you to come down. The secret is to always slightly overprice everything, so that when they ask you to come down from a quarter to a dime, they walk away feeling like they have won somehow. But the real winner is me, because this is just one less piece of crap that I have to dust or trip over! The other interesting thing is that the items that you think will sell are normally the ones you wind up toting to Goodwill at the end of the day. But that bag of bleach stained bathtowels, you can bet someone will be willing to give two bucks for those! The brand new chino pants or polo shirt? No! Those used baby washcloths and burp pads? Yes!
The biggest problem this year for me, other than the fact that my entire family has bad colds, was that I made a pact (with myself) on November 1st that I was not going to make any unnecessary purchases for myself this month. No lipgloss, no shampoo, no hair products, no clothes, nothing! So when I spotted a Vera Bradley handbag in the Java Blue pattern (which I have been wanting!!!) I was presented with a dilemma. I mean, it was brand spankin' new, and these are very expensive(in my opinion!) little bags. Luckily, I was able to barter with the seller of this bag! I gave her one hour of tutoring her son in exchange for her bag. Phew!
PS Jessica if you read this I have a really cute baby Gap sweater vest for Thatcher! He looks so cute in sweater vests!