Garage Sale Delimma

​Seems like every spring (or fall) I decide I  need to have a garage sale.  I do a slight purge of my closet-pulling out a few things that I have had for ages and am finally willing to part with—like those that I purchased from Paul Harris (anyone remember THAT store? Circa 1992)  I have lots of solid color tops and blouses and have convinced myself that they do not go out of style.  Doesn’t everyone need five black -shirts?  And before you judge here some are V-necks and some have rounded necks, so yes, I need all five. 

If you have ever had a garage sale, you know that clothes are not your best sellers—unless they are marked under 25 cents or size 2T.  But it always seems like clothes are what I have the most of…and they are the hardest to price—do you put a price tag on every single piece or put like items in a box with one price fits all?  See all the stress that comes with hosting a sale.

Early last year (2020) I helped Cindy clean out her kitchen so I had lots of small appliances and great items that would be hot commodities.  I could draw the folks up the driveway with view of goodies and then do a hard sell on some of the hard to sell items.  “You can have 5 cassette tapes a nickle”  BUT then we were hit with the pandemic and garage sales were not very desirable—for both the seller and the buyer.  So after about 4 months of “storing” all of these priceless gems, I decided that it was not worth it and that maybe my garage sale days were over.  So I loaded up every bag of clothes and all the boxes of kitchen gadgets and other goodies and off to Goodwill I went.  What a relief to get rid of a little bit of clutter.

Fast forward to present day.  I have several bags of clothes and a few furniture items and other things that would be a sure sell.  SO……..do I set up tables and spend 3-4 days pricing and organizing to have a garage sale on a Friday morning, maybe carrying over to Saturday morning and then spend Saturday afternoon boxing up all the “left overs” in 100 degree Texas heat?  Furthermore, I RARELY make over $200, heck I would be thrilled if it would make $200…… so is it worth it?  If I calculate up all the hours of prep, event management and clean up, and use my “profit” from my last sale as reference, it comes to about $4 an hour.  Wait…what?
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Goodwill, here I come.   Unless you tell me that you would love a red Paul Harris cardigan?