First fundraiser of the fall season

As part of my fundraising for the fall season I decided to get together with a few of my friends and have a tag sale.  I really didn’t want to send out letters and emails asking people for money again.  You can only do that so many times without being a (insert adjective here).  So my friends Rob and Tracy agreed to host one with me.  We decided that we would each gather stuff and whatever each of us sold would go to our individual fundraising.  Tracy and I both posted “GOT JUNK?” messages on facebook.  I’m not sure if Rob did or not. 

I collected every old picture frame, unused Christmas gift, hardcover book etc. from my house, rampaged my best friend’s house, and left flyers in mailboxes in my Grandmother’s neighborhood.

Rob, Tracy and I all live in apartments so we decided that we would hold the sale at my Grandmother’s house.  She lives in the Hamptons and at the beginning of the season people are always looking for wine glasses, small furniture, etc. to get their house prepared for the summer. 

A couple of my grandmother’s neighbors called me and told me that they had items to donate.  I went to their houses and picked up some beautiful things that ultimately sold.  Another neighbor, Steve, the nicest guy in the world, had a garage sale a few weeks before and promised to bring over the things that didn’t sell.  For weeks I drove out to my grandmother’s house with a car full of tag sale goods and unload them in her garage.  My mother had some things sent there too.  We had to do this sale early in the season, because you couldn’t even move in her garage by the end of May. 

Tracy backed out early, citing a friend coming to town that weekend.  Rob’s mother died just a few days before the sale.  He clearly had more important things to do.  So I was on my own. 

The morning of the sale Steve showed up in a truck filled with boxes.  Behind that truck was a trailer filled to the top with more boxes, all for the sale.  I’ve never seen so much stuff.  I must say, Steve I love you, but there is a reason most of this stuff did not sell the first time.  It was all junk, mismatched coffee mugs, children’s toys that were missing pieces, etc.  I was all by myself and I spent the entire day Saturday just going through the boxes unpacking the items inside and displaying what was presentable for sale. 

Saturday sucked!  It rained off and on.  I kept dragging things into and out of the garage.  Some things never made it out of the garage at all, and I never even got some of the boxes open.  I had a bunch of customers though and made over $250.  Sunday was much nicer.  It was sunny, but I did not make that many sales.  I priced things really low just because I wanted to get them off of my grandmother’s driveway.  I made a little over $100 that day.

The problem was: What do I do with all of the leftover stuff on Sunday afternoon?  There was TONS of stuff.  I had no problem sorting through it and taking the better of it to the Southampton Animal Shelter Thrift Shop.  So by mid afternoon I started packing boxes to bring there.  I took two car loads there and was packing the third carload when my uncle came out of the house wanting to know what I was going to do with all of the leftover items.  He clearly was worried that I was going to put them back in the garage, though I assured him that I wasn’t.  He started asking me what he should pack.  I still wanted to take time to go through things.  He was very anxious and kept on asking and asking so I told him to pack everything. 

Maybe it was good and maybe it was bad.  I think that I would have rescued some of the items, I know one that I would have found a use for since, but would I have rescued too many?  There is something liberating about not going through the items, so when I threw a box away I didn’t have second thoughts.  I had no idea if that particular box had the purse that I liked, or the beautiful wall hanging that I loved but had no place for.  I filled up the car three more times and lugged the three car loads to…(for grounds that I may incriminate myself I will not disclose the exact locations the unwanted items ended up.) . 

Lots of lifting, carrying, sore muscles, and boredom, early mornings and late nights: all for less than $400.  I wonder if I should have enjoyed my weekend and just written The Leukemia Lymphoma Society a check for $400. 

At least my friends and family got to get rid of a bunch of stuff.