What's Wrong With My Stuff??

As I prepared for the garage sale this morning (which went fine, although I wish we could have unloaded a few more pieces of furniture), I kept remembering the following post that I wrote for my cancer scare blog last summer. It is still true today, so I thought I'd post it again ... Happy Memorial Day!!


OK, from the title, you may be thinking that I'm wondering yet again, if my friend the volleyball* is malignant or benign. But no, the header deals with something much closer to the human experience, something that bonds us as homo sapiens like no other event-- we had a garage sale.

This is probably the fifth or sixth extravaganza we've hosted -- trying to unburden our souls and closets of all the $^*& that is holding us back from reaching our true potential as spiritual beings, and more importantly, as organized storage icons who desperately need to make room for a whole new load of crap.

And for some reason, there is no activity on earth that deflates my self-esteem faster than putting out the sale sign and hearing The Crazy Woman (she's here every year, so I think she deserves the capital letters) knock on our garage door as we do our last-minute pre-opening preparations.

The doubting questions always start to flood my brain. Will the shoppers like our stuff? Will they move beyond looking to actually buying said junk? Will they be able to fit everything into their panel vans?

My self-esteem seems to have an inverse relationship to the opening of the garage door. As it goes up, my self-worth begins the steep descent into an undeserving cesspool, from which I will not escape until the whole godforsaken event is over.

Without fail, this decline manifests itself in two primary ways. The first I call the Over-Priced Syndrome. Having stickered everything the day before when my self-esteem was at a normal level, I tag items at their true market value.

But as the garage door begins its ascent and The Crazy Woman is bending down to walk in before it's actually high enough to enter as a homo erectus, the doubts start creeping in. And I begin to hear the voices, "Everything is over-priced!" "No one is going to pay THAT much for THAT fill-in-the-blank-item!" "Do you see the crayon mark on that again-fill-in-the-blank-item?"

So I immediately begin re-pricing everything. Since I've had years of experience at this point, I now know to keep a fresh supply of stickers at the ready for "new and improved" prices. I usually reduce items by about half but may go down even more if I'm having a really bad day.

The second manifestation of my plummeting self-worth is Product Relocation. I convince myself that if the now half-priced sleeping bag with the chocolate milk stain was only on the opposite side of the driveway, people would be fighting over it. And so begins the product placement dance. Lean this against that, put this on its side and move that to the front. And it works about once every thousand maneuvers, which gives me the wherewithal to keep moving and grooving.

You would think by this stage of the sale, my self-esteem would now be at ground level with no room for further decline. But you would be wrong. It's the actual shoppers (I don't include The Crazy Woman -- you can count on her to at least buy SOMETHING for her apartment, which BTW, is going to be featured in an upcoming Hoarders episode) who really take me on a one-way ride below the earth's surface.

Do you know how hard it is to watch people who look like they are protesting personal hygiene societal rules to look your stuff over and then walk away with a condescending smirk on their faces? One guy at this sale, after the smirky walk-away, actually had to let his circa 1972 truck roll backward so he could pop the clutch to start it! THAT GUY thought he was too good for our minimally stained sleeping bag?

Even worse are the drive-bys. These are the people with their muffler-less vehicles who slowly crawl by the driveway as they inspect the offerings from afar. And they don't stop!!

About two hours into each sale, I want to start accosting the "shoppers" who buy nothing. "Hey, what's wrong with my stuff?" I've even thought of asking, "What are you looking for? I'll go in the house and get it if you promise to buy!"

This year was even worse. My friend Harriet brought some things to sell, and literally, during the first hour, the only items to go were hers! Even my usual price reductions and product placement couldn't lift me out of that self-esteem quicksand.

But having a garage sale is a lot like child birth. As the days and months go by, I start to forget the pain and agony and begin thinking that it would be great to get rid of all the junk we've accumulated in the past twelve months.

So I'm sure I'll have other sales. The only thing I ask is that if you drive by my house and see the SALE sign, please, I beg of you, at least stop and pretend you're not disgusted by my stuff...

*I often referred to my ovarian growth as a volleyball. :)