after my first brush with love in garage saleing and realizing this could be just what i'd been hoping to find to help make my house feel more like home and discover treasures to get crafty with, without breaking my budget (which as an accountant and strict goal setter, i cannot stand doing!) i quickly followed up with, "where do i begin?" i started by asking ross how he'd found out about the yard sale. i could've guessed because it's the same answer that we all give when someone inquires about where our generation found something:
so on a friday night, i pulled up google too. i found a couple sites that were hard to navigate and didn't seem very clear or reliable. i found one link to craigslist, which i'd used before only to search for housing when we were looking for an apartment in bloomington, indiana for our first 5 months of marriage and again when we were looking for a lease in charlotte, north carolina. it proved to be a pretty helpful tool because it seemed to be a popular marketing tool for sellers.
so my process as i began my garage saleing adventures entailed going to craigslist every friday and searching for yard sales near me. there were usually lots to sort through. not only would i usually have to open each link to see how close the sale was to me (which could take 15-20 minutes) but then i'd have to read the description to see if there was something i'd be interested in seeing. and then the controversial street view search. this entails the top 5-7 sales i found on any given saturday and then copy and pasting the listed address into google maps. i've taken some heat about this from friends of mine who don't garage sale, but here's my theory.
i'm going to go off on a quick tangent here because i think it's important to explain. i'm not looking up a house to judge on how nice of things are going to be at the sale. i know there are plenty of people (myself included) who have nice things, but not the biggest house on the block. but i can tell you in my own life, it would be very hard for me to part with most of the things i have because every single item i own has its own special place. its own home within my home. and usually a story to go along with it (especially since ross and i are still in the newlywed stage where half of the things in our home were given to us as wedding gifts, so each gift represents an important part of the community of people we love that so graciously helped us set up our first home together.) but i've found that people who have been blessed with large houses and the ability to fill each of the rooms in those homes, are more willing to part with those things in order to clear out the clutter. therefore, it's much more likely i'll find a great deal at the garage sales of larger homes because they'll practically give it away just so they do not have to take it back inside and because they want to share in the joy they've found in those items. this does not mean that i don't go to a home if it's the smallest one on my list and it doesn't mean that i never find amazing things at these houses because i certainly have (and i usually get to hear the story to go with it... more of these to come in future posts! i love hearing people's stories.)
back to the point. after weeks of this process, i would find myself feeling unmotivated. as my busy season at work started to approach (i'm a tax accountant), i also found that i didn't have the 30 (or more) minutes that it would take to go through this process. one particularly busy friday, i had a thought pop into my head to see if there were any yard sale apps for the iphone. i wasn't expecting to find what i did, but was really just looking to see what was out there and what it could help me with. what i found made me giddy.
i use "yard sale mapper" now. it does all the work for me. it searches craigslist and other websites and then all i have to do is type in a zip code where i want to look and it will show me on a map where all the sales are. once i click on a particular sale, it shows me the description, and even does the street view for you and gives you directions to the house. it now takes little planning and takes out the stress. there's another one that i've never used, but it looks like a good one called garage sale rover. the nice thing about this one is that you can use your computer to look at sales if you prefer or if you don't have a smart phone.
if you've ever wondered what garage sales are like or thought about going to one, but never known where to start, just try downloading one of these and playing around with it. it might surprise you how many there are near you, especially as springs arrives. even if you're not sold on saleing yet, looking into these apps is worth a shot - you just might surprise yourself at what treasure you might find!
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