The Garage Sale

*Prodigy’s “Voodoo People” blaring*

*vibrations on the bed*

RING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

The alarm clock on my phone rings at 7am. So does the clock at my bed side. I open my eyes and jumped out of bed. Then I shoke Paul to wake him and I ran around the house getting ready. I’m surprisingly alert and cheery and the sun isn’t even fully up.

We loaded the boxes into the car and headed to Centrepoint by 8.15am. Thank goodness for Sin Cyn who helped me segregate, price and pack then items the day before. In fact, I made my first sale off her – cat and dog clay fridge magnets and a black Tian Po toiletry bag.

The garage sales starts at 8.30am. Michelle Shell was already there with her books. As I placed the boxes of stuff to be sold on the floor to display them on the table, throngs of people came to take stuff directly out of the boxes and started haggling. By 9am, 40% of the stuff were sold! It was 45 minutes of pure madness. And it was even a little scary. I truly did not expect the selling process to be so intensive n constant. Good thing I had Michelle Shell and Paul to help out.

My objectives of the sale were to:

1. Get rid of junk in the house and create more space
2. Make a little bit of money
3. To have fun

And I managed to achieve them all. It will take about 5 years worth of garage sales to get rid of the junk in my house though. But at least I make some money and have some fun while doing it.

Lessons to be learn when managing a garage sale, not to be confused with selling new items like in the Mont Kiara Art / Bric-aBrac / Crafts (ABC) Market or night market at The Curve:

1. Bargain hunters come early so start earlier than the official start time in order to be able to set up without people pulling the items out of the boxes themselves. You can close after lunch as there won’t be much sales after that.
2. Price items higher as people will bargain it down. Or price it so low so that they don’t need to bargain.
3. It’s easier to segregate items according to price and placing them in specific boxes than having individually priced items. The bargain hunters will then surely haggle and it’s harder to calculate when you have 2 people simultaneously talking to you and jangling your on wares in your face. However, they will also pick one item from one box, look at it and dump it into another box. At the end of the day, its easiest to have one price for everything. And if they want a discount, get them to buy 5 to get one free.
4. Some professional bargain hunters (usually old housewives) will continue talking to you loudly while placing stuff into bags as they tell you the price they want for the items, hand you the money for which they want to pay for the entire contents of the bag and walk away. When this happens and you’re standing there dumb founded and unable to get a word in, let you boyfriend handle her.
5. Bring a fan. It can get hot. Or use a hand held battery operated fan. Bargain hunters will see it and wanna buy it off you.
6. Don’t go to other people’s stall and buy their junk. This will only accumulate more junk which you’ll need to sell eventually not to mention eat into your profits. But I couldn’t help it! A stall was selling Patti the Platypus by Ty for only RM5. And he was almost brand new. Well at least it provided us with entertainment while waiting for customers to come.

Thank you Annie Boo, Boey and Steph who came by the stall to lend support. And to Teoh who contributed to sales!

I’m gathering more stuff to be sold at the next garage sale in August. Yes, you can pass me your stuff to sell but I get a commission!

One Woman's Junk is Another's Treasure

Once, Fruitcake and I worked past midnight 2 days in a row organizing the items in my house. You see, my mum is a shopaholic. The joy lies in the act of shopping rather than in enjoying the actual product. It seems like many women are afflicted with this.

And it results with the house being filled from floor to ceiling and wall to wall with stuff.

It’s rather hard to define what these ‘stuff’ are because it ranges from pots and pans to electrical kitchen equipment (my mum doesn’t cook). And 3 copies of La Prestige, The Peak and Malaysian Tatler from each month, for the past few years. And also bits and bobs and one off pieces like hair dryers, candles, photo frames, glasses, tin boxes, coin purses, sewing stuff, nail manicure sets, back massagers, hair brushes, hand creams of every brand, all sorts of bags, hats, note books, teapots, toys, clocks, mirrors, mugs, porcelain figurines, plastic flowers, glass flowers, clothes hangers, papers bags, tissue paper, ang paus, lever arch files, clear plastic folders, accessories, decorative baskets, laundry baskets, chopsticks, wires, raffia string, multi purpose plugs, candle sticks, calculators, note books, coasters, oil burner, lighters, pens, umbrellas ……. The list goes on.

There are usually a minimum of half a dozen of each of the items.

If you play Katamari on PS2, my house would be the perfect playground.

While it’s pretty amusing having a treasure hunt in your own home and not needing to buy anything because it can be found in the house if you just have time to look for it, it can get a little over crowded.

After talking about this for a year and cleaning out my house and putting all the unwanted items neatly into sealable plastic boxes, I’m finally going to sell them off! This will create more space in the house and generate some cash (assuming you come to support and buy something)! And it’s going to be a fun day out with friends too! Michelle will be selling some books. So come hang out and dance but please buy something too. We'll give you a discount!

Clause 6 of the agreement of the rental of the stall says something about not making too much noise or being a nuisance to the other stall handlers or the public. But we already told the Bandar Utama management that we're gonna screw that clause. We're gonna bring music and dance there if we want to. The guy merely laughed out loud so we’re gonna take it that we’ll be allowed to breach the contract.

My mum won’t know that I’m selling the items off cos there’s so much of them ….. unless she reads this post on the blog. Hmmm……

Anyway, come to Centrepoint in Bandar Utama this Sunday, 24^th June. 8.30am – 3.30pm.

Please bring an ice latter grande or a large Slurpee (Starbuck and 7-Eleven located at ground floor of Centrepoint) for us.

Thank you! See u there!