yard sale

So one of my roommates and I had a yard sale this weekend. Yard sales can be frustrating because you have to watch people scruntinize the things you own. Despite the fact that your selling it for one-tenth of its value, they still don't buy it. We tried to price things to move and I think we did a pretty good job.

My roommate Drew managed to sell two pairs of used shoes. Who buys used shoes?? I thought about trying to discourage him from putting them out because I thought that it might detract the high-end cleintele that my items and sales strategy seeked to attract. Well some creepy dude actually bought both pairs of shoes! He only paid a few bucks and he asked questions ('do these have stains?') but I was still shocked. Drew left to get a bag for the guy and he asked me who the shoes belonged to. I told him that they were Drew's and he goes "Well, tell him that I'll have some nice memories of him....for my feet!" Truly creepy, although he left without incident. And Drew made three bucks or something.

We also managed to sell a huge, stained rug that had not been vacuumed in two years! The guy asked about the stain and only had to pay five bucks for a huge rug - but the thing was disgusting. We tried to carefully roll it up so that he couldn't see all the dirt, hair and food particles - I gues it worked. The rug was literally disgusting to walk on barefooted. Hence the no refund policy.

Lst time we had a sale, someone actually tried to get a refund for some clothes they bought. Shannon, who lived in the unit upstairs, sold some clothes for a few bucks and the girl tried to return them! Shannon resisted at first, but eventually gave the money back - the girl complained that they didn't fit. This month, all sales were final.

One of the fun things about our yard sales is that at the end of the day, we left unsold items on the curb for someone willing to take it for free. It usually takes a few days for everything to disappear. I'm surprised we don't get complaints from the neighbors. At around 11pm on the night of our sale, a guy knocked on our door. He didn't speak good English and it took me a while to figure out he had a question about our free items. Apparently, he had taken some of the free stuff. But his roommate told him he had to pay for it, thinking he had stolen it. So the guy was coming back to return the items or pay, I couldn't figure out which. We sent him away with a full explanation of the free curb policy, our last satisfied customer of the evening.