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After successfully bingeing on home improvements to make our house more marketable, it was time to move to phase two: purging our place of stuff we don't need.Since movers charge by the half-ounce and we're currently surrounding by, oh, six metric tons of crap, it was clearly time for a garage sale.
Fortunately, I've been watching shows on HGTV, TLC and Fine Living, so I'm all over the best ways to de-clutter. The critical flaw in my plan was not duct-taping my husband to the couch and making him watch with me. So when I tried to explain why we don't technically need a couch, he didn't follow.
I managed to cajole, sneak, pry and otherwise disengage my husband from about half the possessions he doesn't yet know he can live without. Add to that the furniture that we both agreed wasn't worth moving, and we had the makings of a damn fine garage sale.
I placed ads, made adorable posters and hung up signs, all under the misguided belief that my garage sale would be as happy and successful as the ones on TV.
Click here to read how Eliza's garage sale actually went.
What television fails to inform you of is the phenomenon called "the early bird." The crack of dawn brought a dozen crackpots to our front door. There were people sifting through our belongings before my coffee even finished brewing.
Who are these strangers, and what on earth do they hope to find? With "Antiques Roadshow" in its 45th season, I doubt there's anyone who would mistakenly put out a Renoir priced at a buck-fifty.
I quickly chugged enough caffeine to plaster a smile on my face and start spewing all the dreadful things I've heard bad salesmen say. Horrible things like "slashing prices," "an offer you can't refuse" and "make you a deal" came out of my mouth that morning.
It wasn't just me though; garage sales do weird things to the average human. A woman showed up carrying a venti Frappuccino from Starbucks and proceeded to haggle over a dish priced at a buck. Another couple showed up in a Lexus SUV but were loath to pay more than a hundred dollars for our patio set. I guess they were secretly looking for that Renoir.
The craziest part was that everything I thought would sell immediately sat there the whole day, and all the stupid little tchotchkes that I figured people would barf over were snapped up right away. Toys, action figures and old kitchen items sold like hot cakes, while the big-ticket items sat there mocking me, as if to say "Sell me, will ya? You can kiss my
So at the end of the day, after a trip to Goodwill to donate all the small things that nobody deemed worthy of 25 cents, we were left with a garage full of desks, bookshelves and media towers. We are now those sad people who fill their garage with crap while a brand new car is parked in the driveway, gathering bird poop.
