Cow skulls and kids: not for sale

I am not a garage sale person. Looking in my cabinets you would think I spend my free time scouting garage sales for mismatched tupperware, cracked mugs that say "I love South Dakota" etc... A few weeks ago I thought I would be ambitious and look for some garage sales so I could possibly find a push toy for Elisabeth.  This story I am about to tell you is true. Only if you live in Mansfield will you actually believe it. I get up early on a Saturday (Actually E got me up, I would NEVER willfullly wake up early on a Saturday.) I follow these bright yellow signs out on a country highway.  I get excited because I think whoever put these nice signs out must have a really big garage sale.  The signs lead me about 5 miles out of town, and then down a dirt road, and then down a gravel driveway that winds back into the woods.  I'm starting to get a little nervous wondering if I'm falling into some serial killer's trap and I will end up in their freezer. I pass an abandoned house and then I see the garage sale sign marking the supposed house - but then right past the sign I see a LARGE COW SKULL, then several more cow skulls lining this long driveway (I have yet to see the house.) Then a sign that says "Smile, you are on a video camera." Why I did not turn around instantly I do not know - I just let my heart beat out of my chest and wandered deeper into the cow graveyard...



Finally I see a flat bed trailer of what I am assuming they were advertising as their garage sale - with little bitty garden tomotoes with worms crawling through them, some old perfume bottles, and apparantly this guys personal art that he painted. The only thing that people would have bought would probably have been those dard cow heads but those weren't for sale, not the tomatoes that had looked like the ones sitting in the bottom of my fridge for the last month.  Oh yes that was so worth the half tank of gas I wasted, possible heart attack, and a really good story to tell.

I decide to do a garage sale myself a couple weeks ago. I've learned that 95% of people who come to garage sales in Mansfield only do so just to resell it in their garage sale.  Mansfield is like a rotating Good Will store.  How I accumulate so much stuff I do not know.  Over spring break we load a trailer full of  junk from our house to take to the dump.  And what do you know - someone drove buy, stopped and asked if he could pick stuff off our trailer.  He practically picked it clean. And then he asked if we'd sell our house. No joke. 

When I start to clean out our house for the garage sale the dilemna was where to put it. Our garage was too full of everything that isn't supposed to be in a garage according to my husband. I start to load it in bathtub #1, then I fill up a second bathtub...when my husband came home he took one look and was like, "what the heck?" I told him - "It's our garage sale!" (luckily we have a seperate shower.)



Once the bathtubs were full I moved to the dining room table.  You'd think there was nothing left in my house, but I really think we have enough stuff for about 3 garage sales.



The minute you start to move stuff to your front yard you have your people that come before you even open,  and your people that want to buy your stuff that's NOT for sale.  (Last garage sale I sold our kitchen table that I kept my money box on - hubby was not happy). I had so many strange people this time around.  I had people offer to buy my dog, my kid, asked me to fix their cell phone, ask for the empty boxes in my garage, asked if I'd come down on from my original price of a dime.  So after a day of dealing with the crazies in the 105 degree heat, the next day anyone that walked up I told them - this side everything's a quarter, this side everything's a dime. That was enough to send Mansfield garage sellers into a buying frenzy - filling up boxes, literally loading down their vehicles in which they were sitting ON TOP of my stuff.  I got a little nostalgic over some of the baby clothes I had to let go - I joined the Crazies and actually asked if I could hug a dress before I let it go.  I  guess I got caught up in the insanity and by that time the sun had fried my brain.  Its good to let go of stuff - we can't take it with us and decluttering leaves us with a little more calm in the house.  Whom am I kidding - "calm" is not gonna happen in this house for a really long time. And I guess if I really want some some of my stuff back - I just need to go to the garage sale a few houses down...

Matthew 6:21  "For where your treasure is, there will your heart be also..."  Things are just things.  Its okay to let them go. Even to the crazy dog lady who might want to use your darling baby clothes as a dress for her beloved pooch, even to the person who will mark it up twice what they paid to resell it.  If you have Jesus, you have everything you need.