Saturday, August 22, 2009

Iowa's Largest Garage Sale

Well, I don't know if that's official but it sure seems like it could be! My great-great aunt passed away a few months ago. She loved the home-shopping networks and she loved clothes and shoes (for as long as I can remember!) and unfortunately for all of us, she was a petite woman with narrow feet! So we had thousands of clothes and hundreds of shoes (literally) to sell. Dad hauled them up here and before Mom & I even got here, he had the "hanging racks" put up and all the clothes hung up! What a great (and ingenious) guy!! :) So Mom and I spent part of Wednesday organizing the hang-up clothes and putting out all the other clothes.

This is just ONE SIDE of the garage. These are all the short- and long-sleeved tops (not including sweaters and jackets/coats!!).

There's the other side...all the outfits, sweaters, jackets, coats and skirts! More than half of these clothes (and shoes) had never been worn...still had tags on them!



The ping-pong table was completely covered with pants.



The shoes...oh the shoes. I really wish she hadn't had such little feet (or that I didn't have such big ones! haha).




We tried to sell this one, but Anna wouldn't let us.



Can you tell that over half the clothes are gone in this picture? They really are! We sold a LOT of clothes on Thursday. Dad roughly counted today...there are still about 650 hang-up clothes left. That means there were probably over 2,000 pieces of clothing to begin with!!!!!!!





We brought a few things up (mainly toys). I had Anna go through the toy box at home and pick out some toys to sell. I told her she had too many and needed to "get rid" of enough so that the toy box lid could shut! She was pretty good about it, but she did have second thoughts more than once. Especially once the garage sale started! There was more than once today that she stood over her box of toys with her hands on her hips as kids were looking through it!! She also "hid" a couple toys and emphatically told Binga "I'm not sellin' this one!!"



Papa thought it was a good idea for her to sell pop and cookies. She really wasn't too interested in it. Except to play with the money! The kids were really good the last 2 days. We're hoping tomorrow goes even better than the last 2 days for selling. We're doing a "bag sale" hoping that will entice people to come and buy lots! You know the secret for successful garage sales? The right pricing (and having decent stuff...not a bunch of stained, ugly clothes and just junk). People don't go to garage sales to spend $10 for a dress, even if it is brand new. They come to garage sales to pay $3 for a dress--new or not! I think that's a big reason why we've had good success with sales. There's a "moving" sale down the street that's been going on for the last 2 or 3 weekends. Why? Because they're asking $500 for an end table! *stepping off the garage sale soapbox*
Lots more pictures to come...we went to the state fair and last weekend the kids and I rode a WILD MUSTANG!!! :)



1 comment:

Eliana said...

it was good seeing you guys! Andrew sure enjoyed playing piano with Anna.