Benefit Garage Sale
Sunday, September 16, 2007
In September, we had a garage sale at our house to raise money for construction. A few weeks earlier, I had gotten a call from Nepal saying that the foundation was finished and that they were ready to do their next big material purchase, mostly bricks, and cement to start building up. So, my mom had the fabulous idea of having a garage sale. We immediately got flyers out into all our neighbors' mailboxes basically asking if we could have their old stuff. Boy did we get a lot of stuff. The old toys, furniture, clothes, shoes, dishes, Christmas decorations, strollers, mirrors, paintings, bicycles, books, etc. Eventually ended up consuming most of our entire house. Our garage was packed to the brim. Having a garage sale wasn’t as easy as I thought. My family spent hours organizing, pricing, and displaying the items before the garage sale. The morning of the sale, we got up at 5 o’clock in the morning to get all of the items out on tables and displayed. At around 7 o’clock, just in time, of course, the rain came. We had to bring everything inside and start again an hour later after it passed. But luckily it did and the sale was a big success.
We even ended up having a lot of fun with the sale. My sister, Kate made cookies, I made a big poster, my mom made a lot of “complimentary coffee” and even bought our “team” matching t-shirts. We weren’t too serious about all the bargaining. If people wanted something and showed some interest in an item they could take it. By the end of the second day, we ended up practically giving things away just so that we wouldn’t have to deal with getting rid of them. It got to be pretty funny. We would find the most random, useless, things ever and try to convince people how great they were. Mike, my sister’s boyfriend, pictured above was particularly talented at this.
At the end of the weekend, we had had a lot of fun and raised over $2,000 to send to Nepal! Thanks to all my wonderful neighbors and friends who donated items and to my family, Mike and friend Mary who helped.