after spending most of thursday and friday prepping we had our moving sale today. everything priced to move.

unfortunately once again i didn’t take any photos, so this picture will have to serve as my approximation. i promise to do better moving forward.
our garage was full to the brim with all the big items out on the driveway. fortunately the rain did not come as forecast. with a scheduled start time of 9 AM no surprise that there were folks standing in our drive at 8:20. they were a mix of the aggressive dealers trying to find hidden treasures and garage sale addicts that should be in a 12-step. the guy we dubbed “antiques roadshow guy” kept asking “do you have any antiques? old toys. old furniture?” and “how old is this?” he took off after 10 minutes of poking without buying anything. we’re both convinced he had something in his hands as he walked up the drive. one of the addicts had all this gear in her car that she was using after she had paid for her loot – large copy of the local map with a highlighted route for the day, magnifying glass, and a detailed listing of the stops.
it was crazy busy until about 10:30 when probably 80% of the items were sold. a few stragglers picking over the remains brought the total up to about 90%. all stuff that we don’t need to pack, store or pitch.
odds & ends:
2 items were stolen – a snow babies chochka (empty box left behind) and one nice ornament.
1 previously sold items sold (again). opps.
eastern european immigrants are hard core deal makers. “how much for this item?”, “$8”, “i’ll give you $2 (money thrust at me)”, “no, it’s $8. otherwise i’ll just keep it”, “$2”, “no, it’s $8”, “i’ll pay you $2 for this”… this will go on for as long as you let it.
the non-financial win for the day was getting rid of most of our paint and chemicals. between the paint the previous owners left us, the remnants from our painting at the framingham estate and the cabin, and all the yard/bug nasties that we had built up we had over 100 cans of hazardous waste that we were struggling to find an moral way to dispose of. our local town recycling center is fantastic taking almost everything – except paint & chemicals. there is a town annual household hazardous waste day but that won’t be until next spring. talking to the town and the state it seems the only way to dispose of stuff like this besides haz waste day is to take it to one of two state wide facilities that then charge $10 for each 10 items or 10 lbs. since a full gallon of paint weights 8 pounds this would have cost us many hundreds of dollars and a bug chunk of time. i can’t believe that more than 1 in 100 families would go to that length – so i have to believe that most of the stuff is ending up in the weekly trash or down the drain. knowing that most folks will do the right thing if you make it reasonably easy and affordable i am quite surprised that there hasn’t been more of a push to solve this problem. i’ll leave it to one of our gentle readers to take on this challenge.
we tried an experiment put out off of our waste and said free as long as you promised to use it and dispose of it properly. we ended the day with our pile at about 10 items – down from the 100+ at the start.
total tally for the day – $1,770. plus a garage full of stuff that won’t end up in the dumpster.
