Thursday, February 2, 2012

Yard sale bomb

Our yard sale Saturday bombed, and not in a bomb.com kind of way. This is the fourth yard sale Amanda and I have collaborated on in the past two years, and typically cars are lining up 30 or 45 minutes before the advertised start time. So this time, when we'd had only two or three buyers by 8:15 a.m., we knew we were in trouble.

Granted, it was January -- chilly, though not miserably cold, and not high season for yard saling. But I'm convinced the main reason for the pitiful showing is that The Pilot failed to put the ad online. It did go in the print edition, but leaving it off the website was a big deal. So far The Pilot has failed to return two voicemails.

The worst part is that even if they end up giving me a full refund of the cost of the ad, it was only $16, and that doesn't begin to make up for the time and effort we put into sorting and organizing and pricing and hauling borrowed tables and a clothing rack and putting up signs and spending the better part of a Saturday in the driveway.

It wasn't a total waste, though. I did make a little money. I did get rid of a lot of junk (by midmorning I wasn't charging for much of anything; I was thrilled that someone was willing to cart it all off for me). I did do a little shopping of my own from Amanda's and Jax's "junk" piles. And I did get to spend some much-needed, much-enjoyed one-on-one time with Amanda. All things considered, I really can't complain.

1 comment:

Kaitlin said...

every time you write "the bomb.com" I have to laugh. Similar to "Coolio." I don't think those phrases were in my vocabulary as a youth. But I shouldn't talk -- I still say "whatever" and "bummer" more than I should.