Of Spiders and Mouse Turds

I have decided that there are few things which are more of a drag than planning—and executing—a garage sale.

It’s bad enough trying to price items so it doesn’t turn people off or rip YOU off. It stinks to let a $100 item go for $20. Nor is it any fun to set up tables and try to organize your stuff by type and color (gee, Honey, do you really think the foot bath thingie should go next to the shot glasses?) or have to wash absolutely EVERYTHING by hand because it’s so filthy from sitting in a garage for 11 years.

But the single worst aspect of having a garage sale is actually going through massive amounts of stuff and figuring out what to sell and what to keep. There are approximately 5,672 boxes out there, and most of them are full of spiders and mouse turds. (Damn those mice, you never know where they are…..only where they’ve been.) In the meantime, I’m getting eaten alive by mosquitoes and I just know I’ve been bitten by more than one spider, which terrifies me even under the best of circumstances. I haven’t actually seen very many, but the idea of them crawling all over me while I sift through boxes and boxes of Christmas decorations and knickknacks just gives me the {{{shivers}}}.

Ye gawds, we have a lot of stuff. When did we accumulate so many possessions? We’ve been pawing through cabinets and boxes for a couple of weeks and haven’t even made a dent. The Man Cave has been mostly emptied out, but we have several closets that need to be gone through, and I’m afraid of the walk-in…..there’s enough in there to outfit five women handsomely in a variety of sizes. But my wedding dress and veil are also in there, as are graduation gowns from three different family members, First Communion dresses, and even a little velvet dress my youngest daughter wore on Christmas when she was a year old. Now how am I supposed to get rid of those things?

Then there are the items I haven’t worn in eons, and more that I’ve NEVER worn, and I wonder how it was that I came to own them. I have to blame bipolar shopping for at least some of it, for if I’d been in my right mind I would have never bought the leopard-print turtleneck sweater…..or the dress with horizontal stripes that made me look like a beach ball with legs…..or that horrid toucan shirt Dr. A likes to tease me about.

So I spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon digging through boxes and deciding what goes and what stays. This was especially difficult when it came to the carnival glass, of which I’m very fond and have quite a collection. I had two big boxes filled with pieces of all sorts of different colors, and I decided to whittle it down to one. Determined, I put pieces aside for sale, reminding myself that if I hadn’t even seen them in 11 years I could live without them. But then there was this gorgeous red bowl I’d forgotten about, and a footed dish I should’ve been using for the mashed potatoes at Thanksgiving all these years…..well, there was that one box I was allowing myself, so I figured “if it fits, it sits”. 

Now all Will and I have to do is put up some signs around the neighborhood, arrange the rest of the items on tables, and hope for the best. We’re getting along fine under the stress—I haven’t yelled at him even once—and while we’re not looking forward to spending our entire weekend in a hot garage, it has to be done and we’ve accepted that. But I’ll sure be glad when it’s over…..and with any luck, our customers won’t find any mouse turds in the merchandise!