Wednesday, April 29, 2015

A to Z - "Y" is for Yard Sale

Maybe you live in a country where you can't have a yard sale, but around here, yard sale season has just begun.

Some people call them garage sales, but if you don't know, basically you gather up your things that you don't use any more but have some usefulness left in them and you price them very low and put them out on tables in your yard or in your garage to sell them to people who might be able to use them.

Whole neighborhoods might get together and have a neighborhood sale. Every few driveways along the street will be lined with tables of outgrown children's clothes and toys, unwanted pictures, tools, old lamps, vacuums, bikes, balls, shoes, and furniture. It's a treasure hunter's dream. The kids usually make out like bandits.

https://aaronisrin.files.wordpress.com/2013/10/yardsale.jpg

Not only does my family participate in buying other people's unwanted stuff, but we also have our own yard sale about once a year. I've already got quite a pile of stuff stashed away that we no longer use. This stuff can go to consignment shops or stores that buy back kids' clothes and toys, but they don't take all of it. The rest goes into the yard sale.

Another option for the things, if we don't want to get money for them, is to take them to Goodwill. This is a charity shop that sells items in decent condition. What usually happens is we have a sale and what doesn't sell goes to Goodwill afterwards.

You might be thinking, why go to yard sales when you can go to Goodwill? Well, a good treasure hunter does both. My town has 3 Goodwill stores, so you could go to all 3. Neighboring towns have Goodwill stores, too. Some Goodwills near nicer towns have better things because higher quality things get donated. The stock changes often. Sure, some ugly sweaters stay there for years, but the 'good stuff' comes and goes.

Unfortunately, we found that since Goodwill started using internet auctioning to make the most for its company, the really good stuff never made it to the shopping floor. You used to find bags of Hot Wheels and Legos. No more. Complete games in box? No more. They are all on the auction site.

Treasure hunt away, good neighbors. Have a sale of your own and make some vacation money. The time is now.

Creative Commons License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

No comments: