My wife and daughter went for a walk this morning and were gone about 20 minutes when the phone rang. My wife had taken her cel phone and was out on her walk. She asked me to drive over to where they were to check out a garage sale. I’ll confess that I normally HATE garage sales. My stubborn point of view is that we have enough crap in our house that we don’t need to go buy someone else’s crap to compliment ours.
Well, I stand corrected. As you may know, we subscribe to a fairly frugal method of buying clothes for our daughter. She’s only 3 years old and really doesn’t care what she wears. We know that in a few years, she’s going to care a lot more so we try to save on her clothing costs now. We got a lot of hand-me-downs for the first couple of years but those have all dried up. Needless to say, we aren’t ashamed to pick up some used clothing now and then.
So, I hopped in my truck and headed over to the garage sale. When I got there I saw the typical crap sitting all over the driveway and also saw three large sheets with TONS of little girl clothes on them. My wife had already started picking things out and by the time we both got done looking we had 22 items. All of them were in like new condition and most of them were either from “Baby Gap”, “Gymboree”, “The Children’s Place” and “Carter”. All of these brands are quite popular and are good quality. It was apparent that these people had spent a fortune on clothes for their child. Anyway, I picked up the pile and walked up to the MAN (always pick the man in a situation like this) and said, “How much do you want for this pile”. I had also made a comment a few minutes prior that I knew he heard. I told my wife, “Easy. You are going to bankrupt us”. She laughed and knew I was kidding, but he didn’t necessarily know that. So, when I asked him how much, he thought about it for a second and said, “How about $5?”. I didn’t even bother to barter with him. I was hoping to negotiate down to $10 since that’s all I had in my wallet at the time. He got us a bag, we put all the clothes in and we left. We got our daughter a TON of clothes and it set us back $5. Suddenly I’m not as opinionated about garage sales.
Garage sales are only unappealing until you start to find things you want or need. Good for you.
Next stop? EBay! Have you seen how much kids clothes with those brand names sell for? :-)
We bought all our children’s clothes (3 kids) at garage sales when they were little. I even got better at knowing who had the kids one year older than my own. Then, I would watch for their neighborhood garage sales and know which house to go to find the sizes I would need!
No doubt, garage sales are great. I picked up a great suit and pair of mens formal dress shoes at a garage sale in DC. All for like $20.00! The suit and shoes were in great condition and would have retailed new for like, $400.00. Garage sales totally RULE.
-James