yard sale, more like... hard sale

Well, Holly and I hit a milestone the other day- our first-ever yard sale. We wanted to lighten our load and possibly make a bit of cash in the process, so we set about to sell our junk.
One of the first things that we learned in this process is that there is an entire culture of people who do nothing on their Saturdays than mosey about, thumbing through other people's junk. We were told, that in order to attract the best of these "denizens of the discarded", we should post an ad in the paper. As I forked over the $27.50 for the ad, I thought to myself..." Self, will we even make our $27.50 back on this sale?".I didn't like the idea of going into a rummage sale in the red, but was assured by many that it would pay off.
Several days from the sale, we started to collect the unwanted items and place them in our guest room. Very soon, there was no room for guests. Why is it human nature to hoard things that we dont need? We couldn't believe the amount of items that, when faced with either keeping, or selling for 25 cents, we would elect to sell. We had a room full of junk, that began spilling into our living area.
In the meantime, I was off, running telephone pole publicity for our little sale, and learned an interesting fact: It is against the law to tack, staple, nail, pin, or otherwise attatch anything to a telephone pole. Did you know this? Apparently it has to do with the frequency of injury to workers- the thousands of little staples can cause serious injury to a worker whose chainsaw kicks back on him. In lieu of breaking that specific law, I stole several political campaign signs and "re-issued" them as yard sale advertisements. (In my defense, these candidates has either won or lost several weeks ago.)
Our good friends Blake and Moriah helped us tag every item worth tagging, and we prepared for an early morning, getting out and arranging everything at about 6 AM.
I woke up at 5:45 to let the dog out, and people were pulling into the driveway.
I was literally dumbfounded. These people looked at me, expectantly, as if to say... " Hey- where's your junk?". I let them know that we were getting started at seven, and that they could come back then. As soon as there was one table out of the seven set up, more people came streaming onto our lawn. At 6:15, there was no turning anyone away, as there were already ladies starting to bicker over the paperback selection. We had a constant, frantic flow of traffic until Noon.
One of the main tenets of Garage Sale culture is that no one can park their car in an orderly manner. We have plenty of spacious parking, but many people pulled in and left their car actually blocking the way in or out. I had to direct several elderly people back to their car to move out of the way of traffic. One woman actually put her blinkers on and left her car in the eastbound lane or our two lane road, backing traffic up for almost a mile down our road. Several people decided our driveway was too steep, so they pulled into our neigbors drive, across their lawn, and into our yard. NO KIDDING.
In the end, Holly and I sold much of our junk- people bought the wierdest things. We decided the immigrant population was our favorite demographic, since they didnt have the language skills, nor the inclination to haggle over a 25 cent shirt. All the white people argued about prices- the immigrants seemed to understand that a Quarter for a button down shirt was a good deal.
In the end, Holly and I came away with about 400 dollars of small bills, quarters, nickels and dimes for our efforts. Had we known the rate of tax deduction from Goodwill, we probably would have chosen that route, but... its an experience, right? We also found ourslelves convicted that WE HAVE TOO MUCH STUFF!!! I dont know that Jesus had a storage facility somewhere with his couches, books, and knick-knacks while he hiked through Judea. In fact- there was something about not storing up treasures on earth...? (Not that anything we sold could be classified as such) It was just such a stark reminder that we want to be a people who "travel light" as Lucado would say. We want the important things to be the relationships in our lives, the grace we can give- not the candleholders that we get. Im not saying that we wont have a few things in storage, but I am saying that this experience has helped to remind us of who we want to be.
And may God help us to never, ever have another garage sale again. (goodwill, come and get it!!)
Blessings- TJ and Holly