The "Thing To Do" in this area is visit a garage sale. No, correction: visit many garage sales. As many as you can. They are everywhere. Every weekend you will see hundreds of neon-colored posters on neighborhood corners, directing you to the desired location. The local newspapers are loaded with entries under the "Garage Sale" heading. This kind of thing gets me drooling; however, with my life as it is I do not usually indulge. I do not like visiting garage sales with my kids, and since they are rather attached to me, ergo: no shopping trip.
Last weekend, however, was a coup for me, a real victory. I have been looking for some items that, if purchased brand new, are quite expensive: a toy kitchen for my daughter's 2nd birthday, and an outdoor playhouse for the yard. I checked my first two familiar sites (Craigslist and Freecycle) to no avail. I checked eBay and, while they had many, many listings, they were all bombarded with bidders. When I see an item with 38 bids and 5 days to go, and already up to $100, I am going to pass it by. I get utterly frustrated.
I could not believe my good fortune when I saw a little kitchen up for auction on eBay, nestled amongst the 15 other listings, with only one bid, $5, 3 days to go. Hmmmm .... I wasn't sure why this kitchen was being overlooked while the others were being attacked by human vultures, but I decided to wait one day and see where it went. With 2 days to go, there were now 2 bids at $5.50. I went for it, putting in a maximum bid of $10. The second bidder attempted a last-ditch effort to outbid me but failed, and I won the auction at $8!! I haven't won anything in a long, long time and it felt great. I had a lovely conversation with the woman on the phone, I drove to her home on Saturday to pick up the kitchen, and now my daughter has something for her birthday.
Oh, but the good times don't stop there! Later that day, when Don and I were driving home (sans kids, who were with their grandparents), I was looking wistfully out the window at all of those neon signs, beckoning me to the 500 garage sales being held that day. I was certain there were so many kiddie items that we could use! But alas, Don kept driving and the neon colors whizzed past me like some strange, mocking rainbow. As we drove up the hill, I saw one sign pointing toward a home that was just a few houses in on a side street. Since we were literally driving past it, I asked Don to turn down the street. As we pulled up to the house and peered down the driveway to check out the goods, standing proud and tall was an outdoor playhouse! Exactly what I was looking for! I jumped out of the car (I believe it was still moving)
and headed right toward the woman. And for a mere $15 (rather than the $150 the eBay bidders were haggling over), my kids now have a playhouse in the yard. It took a major amount of cleaning and hosing down with the "jet" setting on the nozzle, but now it's absolutely perfect. (I also got a huge bag full of brand name, hardly-worn/never-worn 3T clothes for Grace for the fall: $12, with a few extra pieces thrown in for free when Don went back later on that day to pick up the house).It cracks me up that I get such a rush out of these experiences. I feel like some sort of hilarious super-mom, beating the other moms to get cheap toys for my kids. They could care less that it's used, and I don't care either. I love parents who feel they must always buy the best, the biggest, and brand new ... I will gladly pay for their cast-offs. That feeling of success carried me on for a few days. Next on my list? Some kind of chunky plastic climber-slide-thing (no swing sets), but that can wait.
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