#15. Women need to just give the goods away

You would think with all this technology that it would be simpler to sale your wares but not so, at least not for me. I am sure the EBayers would tell me otherwise and I am open to their suggestions! Please tell me what to do, because this weekend, I had a very unsuccessful garage sale; earning about $1.00 per hour. It cost me more just to have the sale. This was very strange to me because I am a professional garage seller – have been doing it for years and I always make money and sell nearly everything. In the past I have attributed it to my keen sense of organization, living in the right neighborhoods and pricing my items to sale. Marketing was always the least of my worries – I could put out a few signs the morning of and like magic anonymous buyers would appear to take away all my used goods.

Not so this year. I actually spent money to advertise my larger items and the garage sale as a whole, through an online classified site. I even paid to include pictures. Well the site garnered only a modest number of calls and emails, so I took the same postings and listed them on Craigslist for FREE and received even more contacts. Hint: Free is sometimes better. The uncomfortable thing about these online buyers is that they want to have private showings apart from your sale date and I would not oblige. Consequently NONE of them showed up for the actual garage sale – except one lady who came as I was packing everything up and she only purchased a set of antique-like gas lamps. In the end I was left with all my furniture and most of my wares. On top of that, nobody was even driving through the neighborhood and it was a perfectly beautiful day.

My first inclination was to drag it all to the road and let the moochers steal it during the evening hours. Then I thought better and decided to call a consignment furniture store to come pick it up. When they did not have trucks on the weekend; they offered me the option of bringing my furniture in myself or waiting until the weekday. I waited. On Monday, however, I was given the run around by these scratch-and-dent operators. I could not understand what was so hard about scheduling a pick-up and became increasingly irritable with each conversation.

In retrospect I think I was just supposed to give it away all the time. Finally, I made that decision. My smaller appliances were donated to Goodwill and my furniture was given to Salvation Army. It was, in fact, easy to do the right thing! I called for pickup and they were there the next morning with a pre-printed receipt. The process of giving away things that no longer were useful to me but would benefit someone else was freeing and blessed my soul immensely. I only wish I had thought of it sooner.

Still I wonder, do these online classified sites really work or are they just fronts for crooks to come into your home? Am I too skeptical? What will become of the good ole fashioned garage and yard sale? How do you get rid of your old furniture and appliances without them? If your prices end up being haggled down to nothing anyway, why not donate it to a charity and save yourself some time, hard work and money? For now, my best advice is to just give the goods away…