The morning of the yard sale, Clyde gets up at 4:30; like a kid on the night before vacation, he’s unable to sleep. I’m up shortly after, and by six o’clock, we’re opening the doors of the house on Baxter Drive.
The house, so familiar for so long, looks alien now. In the living room where we’ve spent so many pleasant hours, tables of second-hand merchandise await our customers. In the kitchen, the tile countertops are barely visible beneath a layer of goods for sale. For the first time since we moved, the house no longer feels like home; instead, it’s a shell in the shape of a place we once loved.
At six-twenty — a full forty minutes before the sale is scheduled to begin — the early birds arrive. Our selection surprises them. My prices surprise them even more. Our goal today is not to make a profit, but to clear the house … and everything must go.
Three garbarge bags of nearly-new clothes go for one dollar. A black woman picks up three of six Arcoroc beer mugs and inquires about the price; I tell her it’s five dollars for the three … or one dollar for all six. (She gasps and says, “God bless you, baby.”)
Clyde’s eyes bug out when I assign our unused Soloflex a price of $25.00 — but later agrees the deal is acceptible, given that the contraption has stood, unused, in our garage for five years. (Could we have made more by placing an ad just for that item? Yes. Did we do so anytime in the last five years? No. Did this dispose of it efficiently without our having to lift a finger? Yes.)
By seven-twenty, more than eighty percent of our sale items have found new homes. The sale concluded, we walk out, our footsteps echoing in the empty rooms.
Add comment