I remembered why I was so not wanting to have this yard sale: people, haggling/dealing, socializing, people.
We got up dark and early Friday morning and finished up last minute details, sweeping the driveway and hanging signs. J got me a clothesline strung up on the front porch.
I had thought I would get a good bit of traffic in around 8'ish, when the Mom's were dropping their kids off at the elementary school (across the street behind us), but not a single one.
My first several customers were men, and I had very little men-type items.
Business wasn't too bad, but not as good as I would have thought, on Friday. I sold about $200.00 worth, which would have been a good bit of items, since I priced most everything so low it was practically giving the stuff away. And in some cases, I did end up just giving stuff away.
I had thought Saturday would be a lot busier, but it wasn't. I don't know if it had to do with it being a Holiday weekend, or just this place/my luck.
Years ago, when I first moved here, I had a yard (garage) sale, and one of my neighbors who'd lived here a long time had told me she'd tried to have yard sales but never did any good. Turned out she was right, I barely had a dozen customers and sold next to nothing.
But it's nearly 15 years later, and there's more people out here, and the economy is a lot different now than it was back then.
But, maybe it was because it was a Holiday weekend.
In the end I reckon I sold about half of all the stuff. I made around $300.00 total, but the point was more to get rid of things than the money, but having some extra money is nice, too.
Still have a carport full of stuff, because it's not coming back into the house.
Dan (my oldest son) said if I was going to get rid of it he'd like to have it so he could try having a yard sale at his house, so I agreed to that.
Told him I'd load it up and bring it to him later this week, but on Sunday I swore I wasn't doing anything but staying in my pj's and laying in bed and resting. I was freaking exhausted.
Sunday didn't work out exactly like that. I saw the tarp was ripped open on our little camper after the storm we'd gotten Saturday evening, and since we hadn't yet fixed where ever it was leaking at, I didn't want to let it just sit down there and leak until it rotted away so J drug (dragged) it up here near the house and we started looking at repairing the leak/ceiling.
We needed to go to the Home Improvement Store, so D decided since we were going in that direction anyway, he would go home that evening. We loaded up a ton of the yard sale stuff and took him home and went to HD, and Aldi for some groceries.
HD didn't have what we needed in stock, so we bought a new tarp to cover the camper and I ordered the stuff we needed to make the repairs from Amazon.
So Monday, Labor Day, I was definitely going to lay up in my pj's all day and not do anything.
But R had decided he was going to try to fix his car (the one I was driving the other day when the JERK tried to kill me. The water pump ended up going out, but we don't know why or if that had anything to do with the transmission not shifting).
Anyway, he needed some certain tools we don't have, and then he decided that he's tired of trying to chase down, dig through, search out his Dad's tools, so he wanted to buy his own tools.
And Harbor Freight was having a Labor Day sale, with 20% off coupons, so off we went to HF.
While we were out, we stopped into Walgreens for some weekly sale items.
I had 4,000 points ( = $4.00) on my card from buying the bacon last week.
The Epsom Salts this week is $4.00, then you get a $4.00 Register Reward back, making the Epsom salts Free after Reward.
The Points are only usable in certain increments, for example $1.00, $3.00, $5.00, etc. so I used 3,000, or $3.00, of my points to buy the Epsom salts, and only paid $1.00 + tax cash.
I got back a $4.00 reward, which I used to pay for part of my other items.
The Doritos were on sale for $1.99 each for Labor day. My kids love those so I buy them some as a treat when I find them on sale.
Some General Mills cereals are $1.99 this week. I saw there were printable coupons for Trix, Cinnamon Toast Crunch, Cheerios, but I didn't take any with me, so I bought a box of Lucky Charms that I wouldn't have had a coupon for anyway. The boys also love Lucky Charms, and I can go back later in the week for the other cereals and take some coupons with me.
The Brach's mallowcreme candies....candy corn, pumpkins, Harvest mix, etc - are on sale for 2/$3.00 this week, or $1.50 each.
I make a snack of mixed candy corn and peanuts for Halloween, so planning ahead and buying the candy when it's on sale saves me money later on, when I would be ready to make the snack and probably have to pay full price for everything.
The chips, cereal and candy added up to $8.97. I used $1.00 of Points, plus my $4.00 reward, so including tax I ended up spending less than $5.00 cash out of pocket.
Then we returned home and I saw on my desk a Kohl's $10 off $25 coupon, plus $10.00 Kohl's bucks, both expiring yesterday.
So I spent awhile (okay, hours and hours) scouring Kohl's online looking for something to buy.
After the trauma of the yard sale this weekend, I did not want to buy a nother THING to go in this house.
None of us need clothes. Certainly no Home Decor. No kitchen utensils, or toys, or....anything.
I eventually finally settled on an Alabama (college football, not the Country singing group) long-sleeved Tee for J, and a set of pajamas for me. I'll wrap them up for Christmas presents.
But when they come in, two things are going out. Each. Total of 4 things.
Maybe more.
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