One person's trash is another person's treasure AKA Garage sale bonding

I had a garage sale on Saturday.  In a totally typical bit of poor planning, this was taking place the morning after I hosted a sit-down dinner for 12.  Why? Because I'm a dumbass. But, I digress.  Now, I do realize that a garage sale doesn't have anything to do with friends - but it did result in a getting to spend a good chunk of the day with a couple of great women.  Laughter ensued.

S & I had a ton of little girl crap - toys, shoes, bedding, etc. along with other general house stuff.  Doing the sale together meant we wouldn't be bored out of our minds alone and that our kids would run unsupervised through only one house.  Now, S and her family were at my house for dinner the previous night so seeing her pull up before 7 a.m. the next day found us both a little bleary-eyed.  We posted signs (lessons learned:  stakes do not go easily into hard desert ground, duct tape can go bad and a fourth grader on a bike should be required to go back out and check on the said signs), got the kids entertained and had our first customers.

We'd been outside for less than an hour when a big SUV pulls up with one mom and two kids hanging out the windows. Lo and behold, my friend A and her two kids were in the 'hood.  A quick stop turned into an all day visit as her daughter disappeared into the house to play with the other girls.  A & S didn't know each other but a quick intro led to a long chat - about kids, school and stuff as inane as moving your goods from an old purse into a new one (we all admitted we love this and I'm not the least bit embarrassed to write that.)  We watched our kids eat crap at 8:30 in the morning and were all equally shocked by our customers. (Let me say this about garage sale shoppers in my neck of the woods - cheap ass low-ballers.)

A was our garage sale bitch: she made the much appreciated Starbucks run, flagged down a neighbor she knew better than I did and talked him into buying three of my bigger ticket items, bought stuff from both me and S, brought even more crap food for our kids to eat and even added some stuff to the sales pile.

Hooker on a scooter

About five hours later our shoppers had petered out (I hope my daughter riding her scooter down the street while dressed like a hooker didn't scare them away), our kids needed real food and we were all ready to be out of the sun.  Our kids had played happily with no fighting though A's son and the only boy in the bunch was thoroughly disgusted with all the girls by this point.  My dog and cat were exhausted from being chased and kid-handled.  What was a chore ended up being fun. So much so, we all agreed to do it again in the Spring (I have told my daughter that if we don't keep getting rid of crap, we'll be like one of those houses on "Hoarders" - she's horrified but happily parting with stuff.)

And, two friends had become three. Way more valuable than anything we sold.