Garage Sale

When we moved to Hawaii from Norfolk three years ago, it was all done in haste. The trash cans were practically packed by the movers with the trash still in them. Our Norfolk home was 2,300 square feet with half an acre of yard. The house here is about 1,650 square feet with enough yard to start up the mower. So between the mélange we should have purged then and the size of the house now, we were busting this joint at the seams with surplus detritus.

We've been planning this sale for about three months, I think Sue and I finally got serious about it last month. We went through the house room by room and opened nearly every box we brought here from the East Coast. We sorted the assemblage into three piles: sell, give-away, and throw-away. The sorting part was actually easier for us to do than we thought.

The day started at 4AM with me posting a series of signs around the neighborhood. The Adams family provided us with some canopy tents and fold out tables, and we also had three large steel shelves we used to hold-up, prop-up or tie-up all the tchotchkes that we had for sale. Ceci Adams is pretty much a garage sale pro, she had tons of tips for us. One of the killer ones was: sell food. A hot dog, or a bottle of water in the hot Ewa sun makes for a quick buck, and people hang out, talk-story and buy more.

The sale ran from 7AM until 2PM. At close I pulled down all the signs, we got everything from the driveway back into the garage, and headed out for dinner at the Sizzler in Waipahu. We had a lot to celebrate, we had a family event, we purged a ton of old junk, and we pocketed a cool 400 bucks! Epic WIN.

Thanks again Adams for all the help.