Yard Sale

"Owl Medicine," collage by Concord, NH artist Susi Richardson. Originally $180, available for wicked good yard sale price of $100!

We had a yard sale, yesterday. We do that every so many years – it’s amazing how much stuff accumulates over time, and yard sales are kinda fun – you get the satisfaction of seeing empty spaces on your shelves and in your closets, knowing that your stuff is being used by someone else rather than just dumped, and you get to meet lots of interesting people – and sometimes their dogs – as they check out your stuff and decide if they want to make it their stuff.

Yesterday, for example, I met a wicked interesting artist who lives one town over, who I felt an immediate connection to and could have talked to for hours. I also met an older woman who’s a non-professional psychic, and we also talked for quite a while, but the sale got busy and I didn’t get to talk to her as long as I’d have liked – I have some pretty good ghost stories I’d like to have told her. There was a very well-behaved, sweet dog – short-haired part collie, part hound – who got lots and lots of pats and made me long for my old buddy all over again. And a young woman who flirted with Catman and made him very, very happy, stroking his head until he drooled and purred. And yes, though I kept Catman inside most the time because he’s deaf and doesn’t believe cars are a threat, he escaped a couple of times, and peed on strangers’ car tires. Dog: He’s a dog-cat. Sorry, strangers!

My best sale was of two of my Mom’s old-fashioned, macramé-like woven seats porch/beach chairs: “mid-century modern, and comfortable, try sitting on one!” It took me 15 minutes to convince them, but an older couple who made the mistake of saying, “How pretty!” in my hearing eventually bought both for a grand total of $1. They got the best bargain of the day. I earned that dollar!

Frog escaped from Mom's yard sale stuff onto my wart rail: NSF

 At the end, we’d sold probably half the stuff we’d put out. Most of what was left were books – I guess there weren’t that many readers of linguistics and philosophy visiting my yard yesterday, but what really surprised me was that the vampire books didn’t sell!

 Getting ready for the yard sale was the process of more than a month. Every day during that time, I was looking at stuff around the house, and asking myself “I’ve looked at this thing for at least the last 15 years, do I want to keep looking at it for the next 15, or have I lost interest in it?” The reasons for keeping stuff are personally interesting, too – I collect books (just dated myself: when I was young, a good book collection was a thing of envy) and it psychically hurts to get rid of any. First I have to decide that I’m never going to read that particular book again, which is hard when I don’t actually remember what’s in it; then I have this weird, but-this-is-part-of-my-personality-how-can-I-get-rid-of-this thing my brain and heart do; and then I have to wait until the sense of ridiculous sets in. Then I can clean off a row of books, but only then.

White Spider; also NFS (not for sale)

Same kind of thing happens with other stuff. This vessel was made by a local artisan, that piece of glass was made by another local artisan, that covered pottery bowl I’ve had since I was 20, this glass vessel was made by an artisan and given to me by a friend, this thing is completely impractical in my world but once was a thing I longed for ‘til I could acquire it, and how many dinner plates, mugs, and kitchen scrapers do two people need? Am I really going to give big dinner parties again, even though many friends have moved or died or otherwise have life changes that would make it impossible to come to a dinner party? So do I need 20 dinner/salad/dessert plates, 20 wine glasses, 20 water glasses, or would 12 do? Do I even like the way these look anymore? What if one breaks and I don’t have any back-up? These drinking glasses were my grandmother’s – shouldn’t I be saving them for my niece and her kids?

I’m from New England – you don’t easily get rid of anything that might be useful some day. My brain even takes me to a place where the what-ifs include extreme poverty, war, mass destruction…

Even so, I managed to let go of a lot of stuff. The Husband has much less problem getting rid of stuff – he’s from Ohio, and hasn’t got a sentimental or cautious bone in his body. Last night, after I’d cleared my books from one shelf in his bedroom, he commented on how much nicer the room was with an empty shelf. He isn’t fooling me – what he really meant was it opened space for him to store more of his ratty t-shirts that I can’t get him to throw out.

I even managed to get rid of – that is, pass along – 3 of the 6 Christmas cactuses I somehow have acquired and don’t know how. I didn’t buy any of them; one came from my mother, who guilt-tripped me into taking it when she didn’t want to deal with it any longer; one from an old office waiting room, ditto the guilt trip from a colleague, and the other four are mysteries. Now I’m down to 3, and I put two plant stands in the sale, too, so it’ll be harder to acquire more plants I don’t really care about. 

Calla that bloomed outside this summer - a plant I do care about!

The aftermath of a yard sale, of course, is: now what do we do with the stuff that didn’t sell? Have another yard sale? Pack it away in the garage so the mice can frolic with it and it can mold in the humidity? Put it at the end of the driveway with a “FREE STUFF” sign on it? Take it to the dump?

The Husband would just take it all to the dump, but my feeling is, if it was good enough for a yard sale, it’s still good, and there’s someone out there who wants it even if they didn’t get to our yard sale yesterday. So a bunch of stuff (pottery and glass, mostly) that the mice can’t hurt got wrapped up and stored in bins in the garage; a bunch of other stuff (cloth, metal and wood, mostly, and books) came back into the house, where they’ll sit in piles until I decide about another yard sale; several boxes of books got loaded into my car, and I’ll put them out on the bench in the building at work where we all put stuff we don’t want so others can help themselves; the plastic garden furniture went out to the end of the driveway with the free sign on it and it’ll make its way to the dump in a few days if no one takes it; and we took a load of stuff to the dump that could be put over in the corner where folks leave stuff like that which other people might want. If anyone wants a cranky wood chipper or a bunch of old garden tools, you’ll find ‘em at the Wilmot dump.

One pile of yard sale leftovers - new yard sale seeds?

It’s hot and humid today, and even though I need to go into the garden, I find my eyes straying across shelves and thinking about unused clothes and blankets in cupboards, and still wondering if I really, really need 20 dinner plates. Oh, and there’s something I meant to put in the yard sale, and forgot; oh, and there’s another. Hmmm…town-wide yard sale is in a few weeks, there’s probably time to get put onto the map; and I spent several mosquito-bitten hours out in the garage Friday night, pricing stuff. The prices are still on, and yup, it would probably be worth it. It’s too hot to be outside now anyway, I could wait ‘til a little later. And in the meantime: Yard Sale!

It’s addicting…

For the blog, 28 July 2019.
All photos Debra Marshall