Man it was hot today. Long, hot day. But all in all, it went pretty darn good this weekend. The garage sale was a success.
My sister took Saturday duty and they had a ton of people and sold a lot of the big items and made a whopping $500 for the day! So awesome.
Today, I started my day at 6:30am got ready, headed to Mom’s and got there around 8am. It was really slow; just a few stragglers and Looky-Loo’s – some who didn’t even get out of their vehicles and just slowly drove by or idled next to the driveway and then moved on. (Lame.) The few sales were pretty minor – $3 here, $6.75 there. We stopped for lunch around 1:15pm or so and as we’re eating it started to rain. That was pretty much the end of that. It kept raining for over another hour so we just called it done. At that point, we had made about $40 for the day. I joked I put $25 in the tank to get up there so it wasn’t a huge profit.
After I left, a guy came about the TV stand we had listed on Craigslist. We wanted at least $100 for it since it was less then a year old and my sister paid $300 for it new. So the listing said $115 to give us a little wiggle room. It had been up on Craigslist for like two weeks and no bites. Well, the guy came and when Mom told him it was for medical bills and surgery, he paid the full $115. Brought our total for the day up to $155 and our weekend total to $655 so that’s just awesome.
Got home and took a desperately needed shower. Got out of the shower, laid down on the bed and took an hour nap. (The heat just takes it out of you!) Got up, made dinner and Love and I watched tv for the evening.
Handful of the items leftover that are worth something are going to go on ebay; the rest is off to Goodwill or Habitat for Humanity or such. It was weird the things that sold in some cases and the things that didn’t. Some people were really nickle-and-dimming us and it was like, jeez, just pay the extra buck for crying out loud! One crazy woman picked up an electric hand mixer with a price tag that clearly said “$5” and she says, “Ok, I’ll take this for 59 cents…” and Mom’s like, “Uh, that’s five dollars.” The lady got all huffy and said she could buy a new one for that price (yeah right) and didn’t buy it. 59 cents? What the hell? We don’t even know where she came up with that. Such a weird, random number. Mom and I laughed about her all morning.
It was a lot of work and everyone really was so great. Mom’s going to send me the contact info for everyone who donated items (it was like 5 households that contributed their goods to the sale) so I can send thank you card to each of them. It’s the one thing that’s been good about this whole process; everyone has been so kind and generous and thoughtful. It’s been amazing.
Anyway, that’s the garage sale. It’s finally done and we did good. Still a lot more will be needed before it’s all said and done but things like this really help so much. Puts the goal just that little bit closer to being reached.
Tags: assistance, charity, donations, financial assistance, fundraiser, garage sale, help paying doctor bills, help paying hospital bills, hysterectomy, medical bills, medical fundraiser, paying medical bills, raising money for medical bills, raising money for surgery, upcoming surgery
2 Comments
OMG, people at yard sales drive me nuts. I always want to be like, “do you see a sign over my head that says Turkish Market? No? THEN STOP HAGGLING WITH ME OVER THE PRICE.” I would seriously rather see it go to Goodwill for free than to take someone’s fifty-nine cents for a $5 item. Gah.
Oh I know! The thing that was crazy was we made a point to advertise and mention that it was for medical bills and surgery and people would STILL haggle down constantly. It’s like, don’t you understand we’re out here doing this to raise money not give shit away?