Losing Even More

Last time I mentioned how I had lost a few things and that those losses were good things.  Well, the good losses continue.  This past weekend we had the first of what will undoubtedly be several garage sales as we continue to trade all of this stuff we have accumulated for our freedom.

If I knew then what I know now I certainly wouldn't have bought some of this stuff...but as I've admitted before, I was somewhat the good little American consumer that our society trained us to be since we were children.  Fortunately neither my wife nor I have ever been big spenders or overly compelled to "keep up with the Joneses", so the damage to our freedom isn't nearly as bad as it could have been.  Still, even recouping a small percentage of the price paid for many of these things we no longer need feels really good.

We held the sale on Friday and Saturday and had an assortment of items available.  We had some tools, kitchen equipment, dishes, artwork, camping gear, electronics, and the list goes on.  It was really only a very small subset of the items we need to get rid of, but was a good start and filled the garage.  I forgot how much of a pain it is to price things for a garage sale.  On one hand, you want to get a reasonable price for things in order to justify having the sale but you also want the items gone (to me the one thing worse than not getting a reasonable price for things would be to have to pay to get rid of them).  We decided to try and price things around 10 cents on the dollar of replacement cost, with some exceptions for condition or the type of item.

Since we had more to sell than would fit in the garage, I often told those that stopped by to let me know if there was anything in particular they were looking for. A few folks took us up on the offer and we did sell a few things that weren't originally out for the sale. We continued to "restock" as items were sold, so it is hard to get an accurate idea of how much we purged.

We got rid of a few big items that has made some extra space in the garage/house.  In the end we did regain over a thousand dollars worth of our freedom.  Not too shabby.