An Open Letter To Minnesota Garage Sale Peepers
Twas the night before my garage sale and all through the house my family was pricing stuff, even my blouse.
Alright, I'll stop. But, seriously, it's garage sale season! I'm over the moon excited about it. I'm contemplating having a garage sale but I'm not sure my self confidence can handle it.
A lot goes in to planning and prepping a yard sale, more work than people even realize. I hosted my first garage sale last year and it was a DUD. It went over like a fart in choir. So, I started selling my items on Facebook instead with success. So, it's not that I had a bunch of junk for sale that no one wanted.
Here's what happened...for days I priced, prepped, folded, organized and assembled a team of family members to help with the sale. The day came and we waited for customers...and waited...and waited. We didn't get many people at all. Instead, we got garage sale peepers.
These are the people that slowly drive past your house and quickly survey your inventory without ever getting out of the car to check out your cool spread. You can feel their judgmental eyes scan your yard and size you up. If they decide to pull the car over and get out, you feel great. If they keep on keeping on, you kind of feel like shutting down your garage sale because they think it's all junk. Peepers, you know who you are. Sometimes, they'll even shout out to you from their car and ask you to verbalize to them all of the things you have for sale. REALLY? Get out of the car and come look like a civilized human.
You can't see every cool deal that's for sale by driving slowly past someone's house in 6.3 seconds. The point of going to garage sales is all about bargain hunting...hunting means searching high and low, moving things around, holding them, checking them out and finding the diamond in the rough. You kind of gotta get out of your vehicle for that.
I totally get that sometimes people are looking for specific things and if they see a bunch of kids clothes and toys sitting at your sale when they're on the hunt for a dresser, there's no need to come up and say hi to you. I get it...but, can you really see everything I'm selling in the 3 seconds it takes you to drive past my driveway...maybe...but probably not.
Dear garage sale peepers, please just park your car and come up and chat with me like a normal treasure hunter. Not only might you find what you're looking for, you might find a cool treasure that you weren't looking for. At the very least, you'll make me feel better about myself and my garage sale if you just get out of the car.
Thank you.