In better times, a yard sale is a good way to clear the junk out of the closets and make a little bit of extra money.  And what doesn’t sell will find a good hope at the Salvation Army thrift store or something similar.

This past weekend there was a yard sale that was initially advertised for Friday and Saturday.  The folks taped over the sign the next day: “Sun.”  So we stopped by there after church, and bought a couple of things.  I recognized some of the collectible plates they had as being at the previous day’s flea market.

On my way to work yesterday, they had replaced the taped-over sign: “Mon.”

This morning: “Tue.”

That’s not normal, but even more so, there was another yard sale just down the road that also had had their stuff out for five days.

What’s up?

It could be a number of things:

• The weather is getting colder and they’re taking advantage of it before they have to wait until spring to sell their stuff again like this.
• They really like running yard sales. Hey, nothing wrong with that at all!
• They own a business (maybe an eBay business) and they’re trying to unload some inventory at more reasonable prices, without making the buyers pay shipping.
• They are just selling off their stuff because they need to. If it were just to get rid of stuff, there was a thrift store just down the road where they could have dropped it off.  But that’s not what they did.  They tried to sell it, five days in a row.

In any case, these are all great things to do, and I’m not to judge these folks or what they’re trying to do.  If the reason they’re selling their stuff this way is because they need the money, then it’s probably a sign of the times:  People have bought more stuff than they need, with money they didn’t have, and now need the money more than the stuff.

There will be a whole lot of liquidation before the economy turns up again.

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While my wife was at a quilt guild meeting this weekend, I went around to a few places with my daughter.  We went to what will probably be the last flea market this year in our town.  (Next month might be too cold.)

We hit the flea market right at the very end.  I think three of the sellers there gave my daughter something.  One gave her a couple of small toys from the quarter bin.  Another gave her a Beanie-Baby-type snail (we bought $20 worth of stuff from them) and still another let her pick through a box of books and toys for whatever she wanted.  (I knew this person from work.)

I think people were willing to just give their stuff away for a few reasons:

• They wouldn’t have to load it back up into their vehicle if we just took it. It was a little bit hot outside and many of them had already been there four hours, so they wanted to get out of there ASAP.
• They had already decided to give away what they didn’t sell. So why not give it away a little earlier?

The early bird catches the worm but there are plenty of worms for the late birds too, apparently.

Also, a nice aside:  I forgot a box of stuff I had bought at the sale, and the seller had the honesty and presence of mind to take the box into the community center where the sale was.  It was there when I remembered that I had left it there.

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