Switched Keys

This morning Saturday morning at 7:15 my sister in law called to tell us about a huge garage sale at her church. Our answering machine heard her tell all about it. Then she called again. 45 minutes later we were there. I came home with a one dollar keyboard that I'm typing this on a set of Garfield/Odie bookends and a heavily tarnished brass candle set. I had it polished before the day was out. I was 5 minutes too late to get that Remington typewriter I've always wanted.

This garage sale was indeed ginormous with 200+ cars in the parking lot and standing room only inside. It was our only garage sale for the day. It wasn't our normal garage sale day.

When we go garage saling we normally plan for it and hit several. Here's how.

1. We make a list of the sales we want to attend usually from the paper. Then we number each one using that days color.
2. We get or print a city map.
3. We look up the addresses for each sale and mark in on the map with the number we assigned it.
4. Start with the most important sales and then connect the dots errr numbers.

With good planning we've been to 40-50 garage sales in a day. When we go garage saling we also allot each other a certain amount of money to spend (or blow). If you're not careful you can spend a lot of money for a lot of junk.

If you go to a lot of garage sales you should soon learn the difference between junk and a bargain. If you don't shop in retail stores much you may not know if something is a good deal or not. Just because it's at a garage sale doesn't mean it's a bargain.

I'm also a quality purchaser. I would rather have one quality item that two cheap items. Quality does a better job and last twice as long or better. Quality is something you need to look for.

If you're that type you can also negotiate a price for a certain item. I'm not. If it doesn't have a price as in any retail outlet then it's probably overpriced. That's just the way I do it. In this part of the country there is a limited amount of ideal garage saling weather. We're having some of that weather in Texas now.

More than finding good deals garage saling is a good time to meet people and socialize. After all life isn't about how much stuff we get.