As many of you know, my grandmother (dad's mom) passed away this summer. My mom, with some help from my dad and I, did the brunt of the packing/moving of Grandma's apartment, and what wasn't given away initially was stored in my parents' garage, which is a 2-car-er, but is already limited, with the entire Sears power tool department my dad houses there. (You think I'm joking. But you'd be wrong).
We'd been talking garage sale since practically the beginning. Because no single person should have as much stuff as she did. Some single countries should not have as much stuff as she did. We gave all clothing, shoes, hats, purses, and the majority of the towels and sheets to the local battered women's shelter, and that alone was about 50% of the stuff. (Again, you think I'm joking. Tell that to the 2 guys who took a full 30 minutes to load their truck).
So after much hemming and hawing (read: denial) we settled on a date for the Big Sale. The day before the Big Sale, I was lucky enough to have my back threatening to go out on me (this time I really am joking. About the lucky part, I mean). So my parents did the hard part of moving everything into position, though I did help with some of the set up, artfully placing the myriad of figurines Grandma collected, the cups, the dishes, the baskets and other random shit you find at garage sales.
(As a side note, have you ever noticed how your stuff is stuff but other people's stuff is shit? George Carlin did a whole bit about this on one of his HBO Specials that I highly recommend. Fucking hi-larious. R.I.P., G.C.)
Anyway, so Big Sale morning arrives. Mom's been up since about 3:30 a.m., so she's got a bit of that crazed, ascending-into-a-meth-high kind of look about her when I finally rise and shine (okay more rise than shine, trust me) at 5:15. (She did calm down. At about noon. J/K, ♥ you, Mommas!). Though the ad said 7:00 a.m., and we weren't even close to a full set up, folks started coming in at 6:30-ish. The sun wasn't even up yet, people! (As evidenced by the seasoned garage saler who pulled a fucking flashlight out to start scoping the goods). Folks came in starts and stops, and some came down once and kept coming 2, 3, 4 times to buy more and more. And more. What is it about someone else's shit that makes you want to make it your stuff? Once that money changes hands, the product undergoes a magical transformation ("Crapey transformarey," says HP & Co.), that turns it from shit to stuff?
As we got closer and closer to the end of the Big Sale, we realize "Hey, we still have a ton of shit left." So with my promise to help, Mom decided to do Big Sale, Part 2 on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
This time, with everything set up, we didn't have to get up at the ass crack of dawn. We put up a few signs this time and actually got some business. Not nearly what we'd had during Big Sale, Part 1, but okay for hardly any promotion. The idea here though was not to make money, which obviously did happen to a small degree, but to get that shit the hell out of my parents' garage and off the premises. So Big Sale, Part 2 also sported a sign that read:
yet I still got a lot of "How much is this?" And trust me, there was some wheelin' and dealin' going on. "$2 for a crate of notepads? Including the crate? Abso-fucking-lutely."
We'd been talking garage sale since practically the beginning. Because no single person should have as much stuff as she did. Some single countries should not have as much stuff as she did. We gave all clothing, shoes, hats, purses, and the majority of the towels and sheets to the local battered women's shelter, and that alone was about 50% of the stuff. (Again, you think I'm joking. Tell that to the 2 guys who took a full 30 minutes to load their truck).
So after much hemming and hawing (read: denial) we settled on a date for the Big Sale. The day before the Big Sale, I was lucky enough to have my back threatening to go out on me (this time I really am joking. About the lucky part, I mean). So my parents did the hard part of moving everything into position, though I did help with some of the set up, artfully placing the myriad of figurines Grandma collected, the cups, the dishes, the baskets and other random shit you find at garage sales.
(As a side note, have you ever noticed how your stuff is stuff but other people's stuff is shit? George Carlin did a whole bit about this on one of his HBO Specials that I highly recommend. Fucking hi-larious. R.I.P., G.C.)
Anyway, so Big Sale morning arrives. Mom's been up since about 3:30 a.m., so she's got a bit of that crazed, ascending-into-a-meth-high kind of look about her when I finally rise and shine (okay more rise than shine, trust me) at 5:15. (She did calm down. At about noon. J/K, ♥ you, Mommas!). Though the ad said 7:00 a.m., and we weren't even close to a full set up, folks started coming in at 6:30-ish. The sun wasn't even up yet, people! (As evidenced by the seasoned garage saler who pulled a fucking flashlight out to start scoping the goods). Folks came in starts and stops, and some came down once and kept coming 2, 3, 4 times to buy more and more. And more. What is it about someone else's shit that makes you want to make it your stuff? Once that money changes hands, the product undergoes a magical transformation ("Crapey transformarey," says HP & Co.), that turns it from shit to stuff?
As we got closer and closer to the end of the Big Sale, we realize "Hey, we still have a ton of shit left." So with my promise to help, Mom decided to do Big Sale, Part 2 on Sunday, Sunday, Sunday!
This time, with everything set up, we didn't have to get up at the ass crack of dawn. We put up a few signs this time and actually got some business. Not nearly what we'd had during Big Sale, Part 1, but okay for hardly any promotion. The idea here though was not to make money, which obviously did happen to a small degree, but to get that shit the hell out of my parents' garage and off the premises. So Big Sale, Part 2 also sported a sign that read:
yet I still got a lot of "How much is this?" And trust me, there was some wheelin' and dealin' going on. "$2 for a crate of notepads? Including the crate? Abso-fucking-lutely."
At 2:00 p.m., we closed up shop, and still, still, this is what we were left with:
Holy christ, I hope California Waste has a big enough dumpster.
WARNING! Another side note ahead...
As often happens when packing things quickly, some things got broken. In this case it was a figurine of an old woman and a figurine of an old man and woman sitting together. Coincidentally, some heads fell off. And we thought it would be funny to do this:
and see if anyone notices. I'm thinking of putting it in my apartment if for nothing else, a conversation piece.
1 comment:
Holy crap, that's a lot of freakin stuff!!! Now you know how we felt when we had all his grandparents shit everywhere! lol! Imagine 4 of the largest U-Hauls stuffed... thats just how much shit we had to unload from the garage to the dump! That was just the damn garage! It took us 5 full days just to clean that shit up! Now just imagine how much shit we had to unload from the house! So yeah, I feel your pain. We had a small garage sale afterwards, didn't make much money because most we threw pretty much everything away.
Post a Comment