Garage Sale Thoughts

So I'm just now starting to rest after an eventful week/weekend. I've been spending most of this week cleaning out my old classroom and garage in preparation of our garage sale. We participated in a neighborhood garage sale (we figured free advertising - why not) Friday and Saturday. It's amazing how much work putting on a garage sale is! At some point you start calculating (at least I do anyway) how much time you're putting into it and then how much per hour after figuring your profit you made...and then asking, "Was it worth my time?" Here are a few of my thoughts:

Reasons to have a garage sale:
make some $
get rid of stuff
some people enjoy the whole "salesman/playing store" idea
get to meet lost of interesting people
you might get to see someone happily treasure your trash
motivates you to clean out your garage (something we're still working on)
our garage sales end in a friendly donation to our local goodwill - also a tax write-off

Reasons NOT to have a garage sale:
lots of WORK
it's hot outside
your junk is on display for everyone to see and wonder why you ever bought it in the first place
you get to meet lots of interesting people
old ladies might try to steal stuff (ask me about this one later)
you don't have any "junk" of value
it might stress out your family
underpricing woes

Greatest Garage Sale Moment(s):
It's a tie between selling our alligator dog bed to a nice lady who was going to give it to her little chihuahua to sleep in and playing Go Fish with my sister Kelly while waiting for customers. (pretty exciting)

Biggest Garage Sale regret:
Originally pricing our 7 yr. old 27" Sharp color TV for 50.00 (part of the little plastic base was broken off on the front - moving incident) then marking it down to 35.00 too early. After a lady bought it for 35.00 and I put a "SOLD" sign on it, LOTS (7-8) of people were disappointed and said they easily would've paid 50.00 for it. Then the lady I sold it to kept asking me if I was sure it hadn't been dropped. I told her 3 times that it hadn't - she obviously didn't trust me. OH well. We got it out of our garage - that was the point.

So what did I decide?

I decided that it was worth my time. Getting rid of things that you don't use or need anymore feels so good. I'll never miss those things! Chris & I made a pretty decent sum of cash - although I found a great garage sale with the cutest, inexpensive, name-brand baby clothes and spent a good portion of our profit on Ava's wardrode for the next few seasons. Although I feel the fruit was worth the labor, I have decided that the next family garage sale will be held at someone else's garage. I'm too worn out to do another one at our house anytime soon.