In front of Mom and Dad's house.
Mom, Dad, and Pam.
Pam and I have been having a lot of fun doing garage sales with my parents. We did three last year (Memorial Day weekend, August, and early October. Then we did three this year: Memorial Day weekend, August, and Labor Day. The latter two were just three weeks apart. And yet, we still took in over $600 at each. Memorial Day this year brought in over $1000.
We hold the garage sale at my parents' place. They're located in a real nice addition, and a number of neighbors also hold garage sales. We sell items from my parents, Pam and me, my niece Paula and her husband, and my brother Stu and his wife, Joyce. Sometimes we have things from Terry and Carol Easterday, friends of my parents who live in South Bend. Today, we sold items for Pam's sister, Jodie. It's a trick keeping track of what is sold. Pam excels in that role.
This weekend, the two neighbors to the north of Mom and Dad held garage sales, plus two others along the same street.
Mom's cookies are always a big hit. This weekend, she made peanut butter cookies and sugar cookies. They all sold out before noon today, at 25 cents per cookies (in packages of 2 and 6). All of her homemade noodles sold out yesterday. She's been doing cookies for several years now at garage sales, and they pull in lots of repeat customers. Today, about a half hour after we closed and had the garage door down, a girl rang the doorbell asking if we had any cookies left.
I've been selling off my diecast car collection for the last six garage sales. Don't have a lot of cars left. I've also sold a bunch of knives. I had gotten 1000 promotional ink pens from ebay for $46 (a nickel each), and have been selling them for 10 cents each or 12 for $1. I started selling them at last October's garage sale. Today, the last of them were purchased.
Pam has been selling her Beanie Baby collection. One lady yesterday bought 90 beanies, which she'll take to Guatemala on a mission trip for kids down there.
Mom runs a highly-organized garage sale. All the clothes have been washed, marked for size, and arranged neatly on rods in the garage. People tell us it's the best-organized garage sale they've ever seen.
So the 2009 season is over. The next garage sale will be Memorial Day weekend 2010. You can bet people will be back for cookies.
Career-wise, I've been hanging around and writing about and cheering on churches and pastors for the past 25 years as my denomination's Communications Director.
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