The Upstory

(First of two parts)

Question: You have been decluttering and now you have a pile of stuff to get rid of. What do you do?

Multiple-choice Answer:

1. Advertise it on Offer-Up or Craigslist.
2. Have a yard sale.
3. Go to the dentist for a root canal.

If you chose “root canal” you are (ding-ding-ding) correct. If you chose A or B you probably did so because you’ve never sold anything online or hosted a yard sale and you have no idea what you’re getting yourself into.

I’m here to tell you that yard sales are where you go to study the human condition. You are going to see it all. The wheelers and dealers. Fast talkers. Slow thinkers. The uninformed. The unprepared. The incoherent. They all come to yard sales. I don’t host yard sales very often but when I do, I always swear I’ll never do it again and here’s why:

Lay-Away. When these people shop, they make little piles of things they plan to buy. It’s like a yard sale cairn. They hustle around picking and stacking. Sometimes they come and ask you to keep an eye on their pile so they can keep shopping.

Now you’re a yard sale valet, you don’t park cars but you do watch parked merchandise. Your job is to protect their stuff from yard-sale marauders.

They’ll also ask you for a frequent-shopper discount. You figure what-the-hey because they’re buying in bulk. So, you work out a deal that includes a $5 charge for valet service (snork).

Suddenly you notice they are getting in their car and driving away, leaving their little pile behind. You stick a sign on the pile that says “Especially Curated for You. $5 Takes All.”

Where are you hiding the rest of the stuff? These people will wrap you around the axle. They look over what you have and then figure out what you don’t have and ask for that.

If you have a bicycle they’ll ask for a lawnmower. If you have a lamp they’ll ask about a chair. Early on I used to find Glenn and say, “Do we have a chair we can sell these people?” And Glenn would get me back on track, telling me, “We are not a retailer looking to fill a customer order.”

Now I know to say, “Good question. Let’s look.” And I walk them around and peer at the stuff on the tables. I look puzzled. I look concerned. I look regretful. I keep them waiting in suspended animation. Then I say, “Sorry, it doesn’t look like we have that. But can I interest you in this crystal punch bowl?”

Let’s Make a Deal 1.0. Yard-salers love to do deals. Even when they don’t know what the deal is.

One time I put a mish-mash of odds-and-ends on a table with a well-placed sign that said: “The Dollar Table: Everything is $1.”

No matter. One person entertained herself by reaching over the sign and picking up various items and asking me how much each one was. “A dollar,” I told her every time, with a straight face. I thought she was teaching me a new yard-sale game. I thought wrong. It turned out that she was either a) making conversation or b) really clueless.

Let’s Make a Deal 2.0. Gotta love these people. They just want to dicker.

They don’t care about that whisk broom that’s marked 50 cents. They just want to go home feeling good that they got a deal. “Will you take a quarter for it?” they ask handing me a 50-cent piece.

What they don’t know is that I have a sock full of pennies that I’ve been looking to unload. “Sure,” I say, giving them their 25 pennies of change.

Where’s your free stuff? One of my favorite wheeler dealer memories involved a guy who was on the yard sale scene at dawn’s early light and wanted to know if I would do a 50% discount on a picnic set of benches and table. I told him it was already priced to sell (which in RaMar-speak means “no“). Actually, the sticker price is my only price. I don’t like doing deals because dickering is not in my DNA.

So, he’s not happy and he goes away but later he comes back. And offers me even less. We all know that I’m not good with numbers but even I can tell the difference in the descending order of dominations of American currency. I stand firm on my price at which time this dude seems to forget that this is about money and tells me, “Well, it won’t fit in my truck.”

Did you know that one of my super powers is taking things at face value? I don’t do nuances or hidden meanings. So, I wasn’t keeping up with the narrative but I was looking at the roomy bed of his pickup truck and I say, “It looks like it will fit. Let’s measure it.”

But I was talking to myself because he was already halfway back to his truck.

Yard Sale Snobs. OMGee. These people are the worst. They travel in packs and they chatter like magpies. They turn up the volume and you can hear every word. They don’t care.

They never have anything good to say. They make fun of your stuff. They already have a better version of your stuff. They can’t believe anyone would try to sell this stuff.

Mind you, I pay my taxes, do my laundry, and feed my dog. So don’t insult my stuff.

Married yard-salers. Mr. and Mrs. will come to a yard sale and do one of two things. Mr. will wait by the car while Mrs. shops or they will engage in opposition shopping which, as you might have guessed, leads to conflict.

One of those times the item in question was a substantial wall unit. This thing was solid oak, cleverly designed, and beautifully finished. It consisted of six L-shaped pieces that could be configured a variety of ways to fit into a space.

Mr. and Mrs. were quiet no-drama people. But regardless they were battling it out using a low-key hissing, grimacing format. Mr. wanted it and Mrs. did not. They spent some time exhibiting unfriendly body language and facial expressions. Then they left – without the oak unit.

But the day wasn’t over yet.

Mr. really wanted that wall unit. He came back by himself, which was not a good sign.

He said he’d never seen anything like it. He said he wanted it. And not hearing any objections, he shoved a wad of bills at us and we helped him load it into his truck. Godspeed, Sir. I hope you know you’re going to sleep on the sofa tonight.

Next: What happens when you sell things online. A cautionary tale involving scammers, fringe lunatics, and other people who mess with your mind and have no intention of buying anything.