I’m embarrassed to admit that we haven’t really been yard sale shopping this year. Yard sales are a great way to get some bargains, of course. We have just been pretty busy working through the summer for our jobs and doing some home improvement.
So, when we were coming home from church last Sunday and spotted a big neon “Moving Sale” sign, we just had to investigate.
The sale itself did not look too promising. There were bins of stuff on the driveway, and everything looked pretty sparse. Since it was Sunday, I figured that everything good was probably already gone. This is normally a sale that we would drive right by.
On this occasion, I decided to get out and look. Just as I thought, there wasn’t much there. The garage held a few more items, but again, there was nothing there to interest me. The owner of the sale and I exchanged some small talk about the day, church and his move. He asked if there was anything that I was looking for and I mentioned our quest for a dining room table. My family of five has been seated around our old game table for dinner, and we had long outgrown it.
I’m glad I mentioned it. Not only was he selling a large enough table in the finish we wanted, but most of the contents in the house. I pulled my husband and the kids out of the car, and we had a very successful day shopping at this one house. We came away with our table and matching chairs, plus a couple of children’s books, a movie and a handheld game system. We might have purchased more items, if our budget allowed for it.
There are two important lessons here for those of us interested in yard sales. If you are hosting one, make sure it is attractive from the road or you might lose sales. And if you are buying, if you have the time, go ahead and check out an uninteresting yard sale and ask for anything that you are currently looking to purchase.
You can read more blog posts by Mary Ann Romans here!
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