Yard Sales

Let’s be honest with ourselves, we all like to make a quick buck. As a result we find ourselves constantly looking for schemes that yield maximum profit with minimum work involved. Enter the yard sale.



Admittedly, yard sales can be quite fun if you are the one shopping around. But the story is quite different if you are the seller.

It always starts off the same. You’ll be in one of the messy rooms in your house and say to yourself “Man, I really need to get rid of some of this crap”. Then it hits you “Hey, I should have a yard sale. That way I can get some dough and clean at the same time. It’s a win-win”.

But it’s not a win-win. It’s not even a win-lose. It’s a pure loss, loss of time, loss of dignity, loss of sanity.

In the days leading up the yard sale day you’ll spend hours gathering your stuff together. Sorting it into piles and coming up with prices you feel are appropriate. As the sorting goes on you get progressively more excited. You begin to dream of what you’ll do with the vast fortune soon to be acquired.

Now the big day finally arrives. You wake up extra early. You have to if you plan to catch those early birds. After moving outside, you take up your position and wait. You wait and wait and wait some more. Every so often a person will walk up to your yard, causing you to swell up with anticipation. The person will slowly look around for a while until ultimately deciding none of your crap is worth it. Even better is when drivers slow down in front of your house, give a quick half-hearted look, and then speed away.

The more people that show feigned interest in your crap, the more you find yourself hating humanity. Just when you think your anger and boredom has reached its breaking point, you actually manage to make a sale. Such transactions provide momentary happiness, but soon again you will slip into the state of anger and boredom, as the whole concept of yard sale begins to make you physically sick.

As time goes on your aspirations of making a fortune quickly diminish. Items that you originally priced for $5.00 drop to $1.00. Eventually you start selling those items at 4 for $1.00, just to get rid of the damn things. The falling prices only add to you anger as it becomes unavoidably apparent that putting on a yard sale was a big mistake.

Finally the hellish day is over. You look out into your yard and see all the remaining items. 90% of your crap didn’t sell and you have to move it right back into the dark corners of your home. But not right now, because you just don’t have the will anymore. You go inside to sleep. However you can’t seem to fall asleep as your mind keeps drifting over to the thought of whether or not the pathetically small amount of money you made from the yard sale will be enough to cover the cost of doctor visits to repair the emotional damage you have endured from the day.