Sunday, June 29, 2008

Sweet Bag Sales, How I Love Thee

My garage sale-ing has been thwarted this weekend due to badly-timed car malfunctions, so I thought I'd relive past successes! I didn't blog about last week's trip because I washed and put away everything before I thought to take a picture.

We started out badly. It was late in the morning, so we were only planning to hit up two or three sales on the way to the park. It's true that garage salers fall into two categories: people who just want you to take their "junk," and people who are trying to make money. Both of the first two sales fell into the second category. Everything was priced up to retail value (retail, in this case, being our already-overpriced thrift stores).

So we (mostly I!) were feeling pretty dispirited when we headed to the last sale. If it hadn't been basically across the street from the park, we might have decided to skip it. The ad on Craigslist just said it was a fundraising "dollar sale," which I thought meant that everything was a dollar. Boy, was I wrong! As we pulled up, I saw a parking lot full of tables, piled high with clothes, curtains, and what-have-you, and a big, glorious sign that read, "FILL A BAG FOR A DOLLAR." That's right, glorious. I was out of the car and off before Hubs had a chance to say, "I'll just park, then?"

I duly filled my bag (plastic, not paper, unfortunately!) and we headed to the park. On the way home a half-hour later, though, we were passing by the sale again and the sign had changed . . . . Now it read, "EVERYTHING FREE."

Oh, you can bet I told Hubs to pull over and went scurrying across the street with my mammoth shopping bag in tow. I knew that keeping a "green" shopping bag in the car for impromptu trips to the grocery would pay off . . . . I found more good things the second time around, probably because the items on top had been picked through and/or carried off already. So, for the price of my original dollar, since I can't remember exactly which clothes I picked up when, I hauled off a winter coat, black Dickies (capris), a pair of brown Eddie Bauer jeans, a zip up black sweater, a 65% angora beret, a white scarf, a J. Jill blouse, a polo shirt, robe, and a pile of clothing to resell or give away. Whew!

Where else could I have gotten a whole new wardrobe for a dollar? Talk about a great, guilt-free shopping spree!

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