Guessing Game!

“Be right back,” I told Steven. “There’s a bit more in the car.” I hauled in the second armful of garage sale items. “Okay, that’s everything.”

He looked at my finds. “All this,” I couldn’t help bragging, “cost…twenty five cents.”

 

I think he was impressed. I know I was! I didn’t have a lot of time for garaging Saturday, so I made four stops on my way home from the dog park. Strolled up to the first one, and the sellers called, “Everything over there on the grass is free!”

 

I immediately spotted a couple of things I could use and picked them up. Went over to see what was in the money-required section and thank them for the free stuff. The dad told me, “If you come back in about an hour, probably everything else will be free too. We just want it all gone!” I asked if they were moving. One of the teenage daughters said, “Well, we were going to move, so we started clearing stuff out to have a garage sale.” The mom added, “But by the time we got it all cleared out to get the house ready for sale, it looked so much better we decided to stay!”

 

I couldn’t help laughing. I actually read about people doing this in one of the books I looked at on how to stage your house to sell, last year when we were getting ready to move. I was a teensy bit skeptical about the writer’s claim that she’d had several clients decide not to move after she decluttered and staged their homes, but I guess it must have been true. Might be a lesson in there for all of us about the value of decluttering!

 

Didn’t find anything I needed on the money side of the sale, but as I headed back toward the car I spotted something else among the freebies I could use. And then another thing, and another. I was a happy camper as I put the stuff in my car and headed for the next sale.

 

At the second sale I spent a quarter (and nothing at the two after that.) So here’s the guessing game: which item did I spend cold hard cash for, and which came from the free pile? Was it the pair of red pillar candles that smell of cinnamon?

The very old handmade box that belonged to the owner’s grandfather?

The never-been-used curved shower curtain rod (an item I’ve been planning to buy for a year)?

The three globe light covers, which I will use for gazing balls in the yard?

The new-with-tags black wool hat (in my husband’s size!)?

Or the backpack that was instantly commandeered by Noll Baxter?

All for a quarter. And to think I almost didn’t go out at all!