We started haggling over our hoardings yesterday morning at sunrise when a man knocked on our front door. We hadn’t even opened the garage door or put up signs around our neighborhood yet. (Craigslist is a very effective advertising tool.) So the firefighter opened the garage and let this middle aged man in. He was deceptively spry, because our garage was an obstacle course packed with clothing racks, furniture, lawn mowers, lamps, totes and two long tables full of stuff. The labyrinth did not slow down our new friend in the least. He nimbly navigated through the chaos to what he considered the true items of worth. So we apologized to all the folks who came to our garage sale in the wake of our first customer. The early bird gets the worm, or in his case: the super nintendo, 2 lawn mowers, power tools, an A/C unit, and a really cool rocking horse.

My organizational skills went into overdrive in preparation for this event. I color-coded prices, made gift baskets, and sectioned off areas of the garage that were not for sale (Though this did not deter a few folks from peeking behind the sheets I hung to ask if we would like to sell our half empty paint cans). I put new bulbs in lamps and lint rollered and dusted everything.  I even cleaned out our gift bags the other day so I could use the ones we didn’t need for people’s purchases.  The firefighter told me I should keep whatever we made from the garage sale after all the work I had done.

then…

I tried selling.

I. Am. Awkward. I cannot talk with the strangers.  (How I have ever made friends I do not know, but I treasure each of you and thank you for putting up with my lame social skills in the beginning.) I also have a little(total) trouble with math.  Apparently, garage sale shoppers are not interested in the feng shui placement of the items nor do they care what the sticker or sign says. They would pull the Precious Moments figurine out of the cute little gift basket I had made and offer me a quarter. These people had come to negotiate.  They did not seem to care that I had put price tags and signs on stuff so no one would have to try to talk to me. I was a flustered, confusing mess.

Then my hero, the firefighter, swooped in and made sales all over the place. We discovered that he is a natural salesman, heck he’d start talking and I was ready to buy stuff.  So now I have to share the money with him and he wants to use it on stupid stuff like a washer and dryer. This is a ridiculous waste of money. Our washer and dryer practically work! The washing machine only overflows if you use the hot water or wash a large load, and the dryer has only increased our carbon footprint by a factor of five. I think we should invest the money in cupcakes, a road trip, and hair bows for Amelia.

The firefighter has approached day 2 of the garage sale like a man possessed.  He keeps venturing through our closets and sniffing around our house, gauging the integrity and longevity of chairs that  I am sitting on looking for more things to sell.  I know that wild look in his eye. It can mean only one thing; he has been cheating.  Not on me, but on the stuff we stuck in the garage sale. He has been trolling Craigslist again and some pretty little thing has caught his eye. Probably a provocative pair of work boots, or some scandalous piece of workout equipment beckoning him to come hither with their promises of a future good time.

I can’t give him any grief because I hear the Target clearance racks calling my name.