Garage Sale 101

Foundational skills for an up and budding entrepreneur.

Nov 06, 2024

Temp: Currently 80 degrees. High of 84 today 😎
Humidity: 5 on the “Soup” scale. (1=light broth, 5=thick chowder)
Today’s Playlist: Pearl Jam shuffle.
Conditions: Moist & Balmy! (like the author)
Estimated Travel Time: 20 seconds
Food: Apple and banana (bi-fruital)
Coffee Level: 1/4 Tank

On the Workbench…

In the yard, the first round of storm debris has been picked up. I am now making new piles. Things are shaping back up, although there seems to be another storm down in the Caribbean wanting to move north. Eyes open.

Holiday orders have begun and should get back to normal, now that this election is over and candidates can quit hollering at us.

See my “Sneak Peek” slideshow below. If you have plans to order from my Etsy shop for Christmas gifting, earlier is better than later. For the last four years, I have had to stop taking orders around the 30th of November.

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Garage Sale 101

Foundational skills for an up and budding entrepreneur.

Garage sales are an excellent way to step into the world of self employment, although many cities are now clamping down on when you can hold them. HOAs are the bane of the home employed. So, know the rules for your area before you spend a lot of time and money on it. I have always been of the mind NOT to become a target of some over-caffeinated zoning official.

For me, garage sales were a regular feature of my youth. My mother, Linda, who could organize a cat parade, hosted these sales six to eight weeks every year (not in a row). They were a source of cash income that supplanted probably 25% to our family’s yearly income.

Because of my step-father's work, we moved to a new city once or twice a year, yet we seemed to accumulate stuff like we had been there for generations. This was due to the traffic of family and friends, with their side-hustles, that were always hanging about.

Also, my step-father Donald was a salesman extraordinaire of many different products over the years. He handled Faded Glory blue jeans (they were the SHIT back in the mid 70s), Verde shoes (wild platform shoes), Hutzpah disco shirts, Kleenex and a myriad other products. Curiously, he never carried mirrored balls. “Friendly Don” was also in constant contact with other salesmen who traded on the side. He always had extra samples and items that were being discontinued or overstocked. Oh… and foodstuffs with questionable “sell-by” dates.

Therefore, Mom always had boxes of sale items, garment bags, racks of new, unused clothes and pallets of products on the edge of their digestible life in our garage. She could (and regularly did) organize and open a sale with only a day’s notice. And they came. She had buyers find us from over an hour’s drive away. It must be noted that this was before the age of the internet, email and social media. Her networking abilities were phenomenal in an analog world.

Naturally, I gravitated toward finding a niche of my own within her sales. I was a dumpster diving, treasure hunting, Mr. Fixit, that was always dragging found stuff home hoping to recondition and resell it. I rescued and sold what piqued my interests; fishing tackle, furniture, sports stuff and toys (that I could legally claim).

The money I earned was added to my berry picking, snow-shoveling and wood-chopping funds to upgrade what I considered necessities; records, tools, books, model car kits, better fishing gear, bike stuff, etc.

Watching over Mom’s sales became a lot like working at a retail outlet. At 10 years old, I could hold real conversations with adults of all ages and describe the benefits of the items they looked at. Setting up an attractive display, handling money (making change) and haggling became familiar to me.

One outside influencer for me was Norm, a 50+ year-old veteran who ran a full-time sale from his garage near Oneida Lake, NY. He would dive the lake during the summer and sell his findings at his home. Mostly fishing and boating gear, but occasionally relics from the area’s Erie Canal heyday. He was an entrepreneurial hero to me. He even had a heated driveway that did not need shoveling in the winter.

I was hooked! This is where my spirit of enterprise came from. I came to look at most things with resale in mind, learning value is in the eyes of the beholder (if you can find one). It also taught me lessons in attachment to material things. I love people and our pets, but stuff can come and go without regret.

Woodworking came to me in my mid teens, when I began realizing that I needed a trade to accompany me into adulthood. Its wide skill field and variety of materials intrigued me. I had puttered with it as a child under my grandfather's gaze, but was taken by its gravity at around 16 years of age.

When we moved to Florida, I discovered the realm of weekly flea markets and sign making with the help of my Grandma and Aunt Judy. I found out I could actually run my own booth to sell my wares, whether they were made by me or collectibles, bought to flip. I learned about paying rent, getting tax certificates, competing with “cut-me-own-throat” barkers, Trader Bobs and other wheeler-dealers that the markets attract.

Julie (my candle carving love) and I met sharing a store with Aunt Judy and other crafters in the Black Hills. Together, we were unstoppable in our travels. Collections evolved as we became interested and sold off when something else took its place. Over the 40+ years, we have had mall and theme park kiosks, flea market booths, storefronts and antique mall spots, occasionally getting “real” jobs to fill in gaps.

Now, our collecting and traveling days are past us, but the memories remain. Fridays and Saturday mornings are a bit safer without us adding to the garage sale hunters who brake at cardboard signs and piles of crap at the roadside.

We don’t host garage sales anymore. The road in front of our home has become a major 50-65 mph highway and exiting our driveway can be a gamble. But we still earn our living here.

A world lies before us at our fingertips. We have taken our work online, for what that is worth. Selling from home, via the USPS, is the ideal situation for us at this stage. We pay our bills and eat quite nicely.

It is amazing what can arise from a garage sale. Thanks again, Mom!