another full moon to guide us on our way
the almost full moon, saying goodbye
Yesterday afternoon, just before we left, this moon appeared in the sky, peeking through the clouds. I grabbed my camera only to find that the battery was dead. Dang! But wait! I am always prepared, right? Of course. I had another fully charged battery in the case. There must be something significant about starting a major journey when the moon is full. In any case, I know it is out there, ready to guide us if we need it.
At the end of the day…
Written on May 14, 2012
In four hours on Saturday, we made a couple hundred dollars, but more than that, we lightened our load significantly. Getting rid of that expired food made my day. Not having to reload it into the trailer made Sam’s day. Getting rid of a 200 pound safe that we’ll never use was also a highlight. Giving books and toys to kids who only had a quarter was the best part though. Having a yard sale isn’t just about getting rid of stuff. It’s an all inclusive party with old rusty, dusty, boxes of personal belongings as the guests of honor. It’s a very social event complete with characters from the backwoods and from the city. It’s about seeing the spark in someone’s eyes when they find a tool or a book or a computer adapter that they’ve been looking for since 1989. It’s about being patient and nice when you don’t want to. It can be quite a hero’s journey with personal freedom as its final reward.
If there’s anything spiritual about yard sales, it is this: it is a perfect opportunity to give back to the community. When we came out here in 1991 we had everything we owned in a van. We teetered on the edge of homelessness for a while but soon found ourselves rubbing elbows with others who were also barely scraping by. We spent the next two or three years going to yard sales and thrift stores getting what we needed to live a “normal” life in California. Back then I was proud to say that I had furnished my whole house with yard sale and thrift store bargains. I was proud of that. Somewhere along the way I put my nose up in the air a little and decided that I needed new stuff.
Today I am back where I started 21 years ago. Yes, I still have quite a bit of my “good” stuff in storage. And I will probably furnish my next house with it. I have no desire to go to any more yard sales or to sell anything else at one. But I now have a deep appreciation for both sides of the yard sale industry. A buyer is looking for a bargain, sometimes because it gives them a thrill or satisfies a compulsion, but probably because they can’t afford the “good” stuff. A seller is looking to pass the treasure on to someone else so that they might feel a bit more free. It’s a good thing. I highly recommend doing it both ways at some point in your life. It’s a modern way of sharing—both our stuff and ourselves.
And I guess we do get connected through our stuff. I hope everyone who bought something from us in the past year will find pleasure in their yard sale finds. I hope all those who said they needed to have their own yard sales find the time and the courage to do it soon. Having yard sales is one of the most cleansing, liberating, fulfilling activities I can think of these days…other than getting in an RV and driving down a long, dusty highway…and that’s coming right up.
Shelves are necessary!
Written on May 12, 2012
It seemed like everyone wanted to buy our shelves yesterday. Was it because the place looked so empty to begin with? Or was it just a coincidence? Between my husband and me, we promised most of the shelves to three different guys but told them to pick them up at 2:00. Well the first guy showed up at noon. If he hadn’t been picking up the endlessly talking hoarder and her stuff, we would have told him to come back, but he was doing us a favor…or so we thought…until he started taking the shelves apart right in the middle of the storage shed.
These are heavy duty metal and pressed board shelves from Home Depot, the kind that take forever to put together and make a lot of noise coming apart. He scraped them across the floor more times than necessary, then hammered each little metal piece and slammed it down on the concrete floor, making it sound like a construction zone. People were walking all around him trying to see if they could find any left-over treasure, but he was oblivious, on task, getting his $10. shelves into his tiny little trailer. I reluctantly packed up my Christmas stuff so he could get his last shelf out right in the middle of our yard sale. No sooner had he gone down the dusty road with the happy chatterbox than my RV Park friend came by looking for the Christmas stuff. Of course. I told her last week about this. OK. Fine. I opened up the boxes and bins, scattered all the holiday stuff around on the floor, and five dollars later, she was done.
Note to self: Keep the shelves until all the small stuff is gone.
Hoarders can also be obsessive talkers.
Written on May 12, 2012
Then there was the nice church lady who said her yard sale buddies told her she HAD to come to our sale because we had such good stuff. I knew she was a church lady because she told me to have a “blessed” day when she finally left. She was so enthusiastic. Her face was filled with light as if she had just spoken to God. She flitted around, eyes darting here and there, and after asking about 15 questions, made a pile of kitchen stuff, craft stuff, kid stuff, dog stuff, garden stuff and even a few tools that she admitted not knowing what to do with. I thought she was finished, but she continued wandering around our shrinking stock of merchandise for about an hour. And she never once stopped talking. Listening to her was like listening to a three year old who has just learned to put sentences together, except that you have more patience with a child. One thought led to another, then to another, then to another, and no thought was ever completed. Words came out like good yogic breathing, easily and steadily, with no hesitation in between. Sigh.
Sam and I took turns hanging out with her. We are both pretty good at listening without really listening, a skill that is necessary in the field of psychology. So we were able to redirect her about 500 times back to the current item in her hands. Finally, after scouring every single shelf, table and box, she said she was done. Actually, she said her car was full so she had to quit, plus her kids were going to “kill” her for bringing more stuff home. She paid us $50. for about $200. worth of stuff. We felt blessed when she got her wallet out. Before she left she made a point of looking us each in the eye and telling us how much fun she had and how she never buys anything from people who she doesn’t like, and how she felt like we were connected now, and how she knew everything she bought would bring her good luck, and how she would feel good when she sold some of it or maybe even gave it away.
Well, now. This is part of the joy of getting rid of stuff. You meet really interesting people!
The Eleventh Yard Sale
Written on May 12, 2012
My yard sale assumptions were challenged again this week. I left the dishes and books and holiday decorations in their neat little homes on the shelves. I just couldn’t pile them into boxes and lose the beauty of the indoor landscape they all made. Plus it was easier just to leave them where they were and see what happened. There are all kinds of people who come to yard sales—those who are organized and those who aren’t, but mostly those in between. Leaving some things in boxes and displaying some others seemed to work, because most of the good stuff is gone. So many people came all at once, and before we were ready, but after the first hour I looked up and some of the shelves were actually bare and boxes were almost empty. We’re debating whether or not to have just one more sale, but chances are we won’t. It’s a hard profession, time and labor intensive, and the proceeds tend to diminish after ten times.
In the meantime, what follows are a few thoughts that came to me after it was all over yesterday.
People buy the weirdest things!
…like broken chairs, and battery chargers without a cord, and old dog harnesses, and half-colored coloring books. They don’t want to pay much but they definitely want the stuff. Being the seller in a yard sale is a therapeutic process. You’re trying desperately to get rid of excess stuff that you have collected—dare I say, hoarded—over the last few decades. And having professional “yard salers” come by in their pick-up trucks as if they were going to take it all right then and there can make you drool a bit. You get your hopes up and realize that if it were free, some of them would definitely load the truck and drive away feeling rich. But it wasn’t that simple yesterday. We had some lookers and some serious buyers, and others who just wanted to talk. By the middle of the morning our fanny packs were full of one- and five-dollar bills and the storage shed was hollow enough to hear an echo inside.
Just after we opened, two local ladies bought, yes bought, five boxes of expired food items like cereal, salad dressing, spices, granola bars and herbal tea. They said they were going to barter with a neighbor who has chickens. Apparently chickens are like pigs; they’ll eat anything. So, while these ladies only spent five dollars on this trunk load of old food, they will trade with their neighbor for fresh eggs for the rest of the summer. What a deal! I’m glad the food is going to a good cause. Although if I knew that the chickens I got my eggs from were eating old Kraft macaroni and cheese and Fruit Loops, I’m not sure I would think the eggs were that special. What matters to me now is that I didn’t have to take all that food to the dumps.
More coming….
To display it, or to pile it up?
Written on May 8, 2012
Like most couples, Sam and I have very different approaches to lots of things in life. We’re not quite opposites, but we do look at things through different glasses. Yard sales are one of them. I want to display things on shelves and tables in common sense groups with colored price tags like you would find in a department store, and he is fine with just setting boxes out and letting people dig through them. As usual we have learned to compromise. I organize “my” stuff and he puts his boxes out on the driveway and we hope for the best. Both ways work apparently because we’ve sold a lot of stuff.
Last week, on the night before the big, county wide Garage Sale Saturday, I was on the verge of tears because I thought we weren’t ready. Very little was on shelves, most of it was still in disorganized boxes and there weren’t any real “categories” of things. I’m not sure why I need that structure but I do. Maybe it’s because my first jobs were in retail and I was really good at keeping things neat and tidy and at knowing what fit where and how much each thing was worth. I was ready to cancel and just go to the storage shed and continue organizing for the following weekend. But something in me said, “Oh, stop whining and just do it!” I say that to myself a lot these days.
We got there at around 8:00 and people started pouring in, looking around, some at the stuff on shelves and others at the stuff in the boxes. By 3:00 we had sold about half of the contents of the storage shed. The brand new, very heavy safe sold for $10. A weirdly shaped grill that I have tripped over more than once also sold for $10. Almost all of the kids’ toys sold for a few dollars each and a couple of stereos also sold along with tools, pillows, decorative masks and other unnecessaries. But here’s the strangest thing: most of my neatly arranged dishes and vases and books and holiday decorations were still there on the shelves. Neatly arranged. Waiting for someone to appreciate the Feng Shui of it all. No one did.
I’m learning that people who go to yard sales don’t expect much, and they definitely have no problem going through large boxes filled with random things that don’t match. I may be wrong in my approach, but we’ll see. Maybe next weekend I will load all this cute girly stuff into boxes and set them outside with the tools and extension cords and broken lamps and see if they attract more attention.
Life Lessons Learned from Yard Sales
Letting go in the interest of freedom
Written on May 8, 2012
Trash or Treasure?
We’ve had ten yard sales, or storage shed sales in the last year. I’ve been calling them “yard sales,” but honestly, we haven’t done anything in our yard lately. Having so many yard-garage-storage shed sales in a year feels like an ongoing emotional hurricane. Nothing is settled; belongings and memories blow away with the wind and rain, but you know it’s OK. You just have to keep getting your balance back. Moving yourself and your stuff in midlife is a very intense, very cleansing process, and one not for the faint hearted. Neither is it for anyone who feels attached to their stuff. I’m not one of those people. I like my stuff, especially my clothes and books and artsy stuff, but I will let it go without too much consideration. I like the feeling of being free and unattached.
My husband is, or has been, of the other temperament. He really likes his stuff. It defines him, makes him feel comfortable and happy. He has a lot of knick knacks, and antiquey, multi-cultural things, most of them covered in a thin layer of dust, but he still seems to love them. At least he has been this way since I met him 23 years ago. Thanks to our recent decision to move, it looks like he is in the middle of a true transformation. He has seen the light from the depths of his cluttered garage and storage units. Having just driven a 26 foot U Haul across the country with only half of our stuff, I think he understands the gravity of it all. I am very proud of him for selling so many of his tools and man toys for $1.00. or less. Sometimes I have been surprised at how little he asked for his treasures, but I kept my mouth shut in favor of the greater good.
almost empty storage shed
Three dogs in an RV
Three dogs in an RV
Buddy
I always said three dogs was a lot. Now it’s obvious living in these tight quarters. We’re all doing fine but sometimes it feels like we’re in a cage and one of us might just go ballistic if we don’t get out of here. One good thing about having dogs in an RV is that you have to get out at least two times a day, rain or shine, cold or hot. We can’t just get up in the morning sleepy-eyed and shuffle to the back door and leave it open for them to wander around the backyard at their leisure. RV potty sessions have to be planned and on schedule. First thing in the morning, of course they have to go pee, then they want to eat, then they want to go out again. And later, after their naps, and of course before bedtime. It feels like having small children, except they smell different.
Belle
They do love walking in all these new environments. I can tell that because they stop every five feet and sniff around in the weeds way longer than necessary and then trickle a bit of pee on top of the other dogs’ pee. We thought we were patient. They’re teaching us the meaning of the word.
It’s good for dogs to smell other dogs, kind of like it’s good for toddlers to hang out with other toddlers. They learn about each other and where they fit in. “Wow! Big poop! Big dog. Where is it?” Or, “Hmmm. Smells like Uncle Barney, or was that Aunt Daisy?” Or, “Ahh! Oohh. Yes. Cat pee. Let me roll my face in it. What’s that? Cat POOP? Alright, this is my lucky day.” Chomp, chomp. And they proceed to eat the processed cat food before we even know what’s happening.
Buster
I love my dogs. They make me laugh when I don’t want to. They give unconditional love even when we abandon them in the RV for a whole day. They snuggle at night, taking turns sitting next to us, the pack leaders. Sometimes they lick our hands or feet or faces as if they are simply in love with us and want to absorb our molecules into themselves through their soft little tongues. They let us know when someone is coming down the road, or parking next to us, or when another dog is in the vicinity. And, mostly, they sleep, not getting caught up in the petty human drama all around them. They are the balance to the inevitable chaos of constantly moving from one place to another.
For all these reasons I would recommend getting a dog with your RV…maybe not three, but at least one. They go with RV’s like picnic tables go with campgrounds. And when you’ve driven 400 miles down a long dusty road, wondering if you’ll make it before the engine overheats, and after you’ve attached the electricity and the sewer lines and the cable tv, and the sun is sinking toward the horizon and you sit down to enjoy your leftover lunch, you know your canine friend will be right there, staring at you, waiting patiently to get up in your lap and enjoy the motionless night with no expectations for tomorrow. They are happy to be here now. What better companion could we ask for?
on the road to simplicity 