The Monsterous Garage Sale!

I cannot even begin to express our gratefulness to all of those who donated items for this MASSIVE garage sale! Oh my gosh. We felt such love and support from so many people with this sale. In total about 13 families gave items to sell at the sale. What an amazing expression of love for both us and Rachel. We had 2 amazing women help with the sale as well. Dad took Friday off so he could manage Megan (or as he calls her: Chaos). He certainly had his hands full! Friday our former neighbor, Stacee, came and helped. Saturday our neighbor, Teresa, helped. We could not have done it without these fabulous ladies!

The pictures truly do not give it justice...but...just to give you an idea...

This is what it looked like when I opened the door from my house, into my garage! It looked like this for more than 2 weeks! Ugh.

This is the view looking into the garage from the outside.
Surprisingly this is actually somewhat organized...at least by my definition!

This is Friday morning before we opened. We stayed up until nearly 11pm getting everything "together". Everything (well, mostly everything) was set on tables or in their "garage sale ready" state. And no, you could NOT walk in it at all. You can't tell, but every square inch of the place had something on it! It was CRAZY!!!

Friday was nuts. And by nuts, I mean N-U-T-S! We weren't supposed to open until 8, but we had LOADS of people at 7:30. Not even everything was out yet (and I started moving it out at 5am!). We were supposed to close at 3pm, but there was a steady stream of people until nearly 5pm! And then one group showed up as we were putting things away for the next day...and yet they shopped (and bought and thankfully did NOT leave a mess).I wore my pedometer and walked nearly 22,000 steps. I was tuckered out, hot (it was almost 85*) and sunburned. But we were so blessed during the sale too. We had a sign that informed our shoppers that all proceeds were going to help us adopt from China. On Friday we had 3 separate people simply give us money to help us. And a few others that told us to "keep the change". It was moving EVERY time. But, the one that got me most was a very nice man (who Megan was BUGGING the heck out of..and he was so sweet to her) asked how much for a box of books. I said $10. He said, no...how about $20? I nearly started crying. Literally. It was so incredibly overwhelming. We sold nearly $1,000 which brought both of us nearly to tears.

Saturday was fairly slow. It was about 10 before people really started showing up, and while it was steady, it was more of a trickle than anything. I didn't figure we'd do as well as Friday (I mean, nearly half of our stuff was sold), but I did expect it to be a bit busier. About noon, we told any shoppers that everything was half price. We didn't sell a lot after noon, but some things did move (thank goodness!). At any rate, we still sold nearly $300, which is not too shabby. Although I think Dad thought it was a bit disappointing, especially when you compare it to the day before! :-)

So after clean up, we still had this left:

Its probably more than most people START with at a garage sale! But, I'm pretty much done with the garage sale thing for a while, and I really, really, really want my garage back! Its been over run with garage sale things since at least JANUARY (and some parts since before our October garage sale)! I believe we will be donating these items to a local crisis pregnancy center and safe house for pregnant women and victims of sexual violence. They have a thrift store, and I believe all those who donated items would feel that was a great cause as well.

We all got sunburned (including my scalp) today (even with sunscreen), but then it was 87* and horribly humid. Well, I guess Megan did not get sunburned, she turned a beautiful shade of tan. She even has very pronounced flip-flop tan. I'm so jealous!