Yard sale season is upon us! My kids and I just participated in a giant yard sale. When I say "yard sale", I mean a totally humongous yard sale. In fact, it was such a HUGE yard sale that I hardly know where to begin talking about it.
Part of me wants to say: Never go to Stores. Once I was introduced to the yard-sale way of hunting and gathering, even so-called-thrift stores became a rare occasional foray, such as for a time I suddenly discovered I needed an extremely-cold-weather running shoe. At yard sales, I regularly buy clothing for less than a dollar an item, which beats so-called-thrift-store prices hands down.
Part of me wants to say: Now is the time to check out colleges. (Not for education, mind you, but for all the stuff that students leave behind). The particular giant yard sale that my family immersed ourselves in is one that my college runs. Now that exams are over, students who are fleeing the school leave piles and piles of things behind them. Instead of carting everything straight to nearby landfills, my college asks students to donate usable items, and we sell them to our townies, donating the proceeds to a local women's shelter.
This year, as always, students donated mounds of clothing, furniture, electronics, food, books, jewelry, and gifts. Even with almost zero advertising and with Miser Mom in charge of setting bargain basement pricing (a grocery bag of food for $3; a bag of clothes for $3), we raised $800. And there were mounds of goods left unsold.
Part of me wants to say: yard sales are a guidebook for knowing what you might want and what you don't. Especially at our college yard sale, you get to see in a tangible way "what's hot, and what's not". A few years ago, the students were casting aside flip flops and UnderArmor. (Is it just me, or does that clothing really mimic StarTrek?). Nowadays, it's flats and athletics shoes. Also new on the scene this year were more water-pitchers-with-built-in-filters than I'd ever seen before.
But it's not just that a glimpse at a single yard sale can tell you about trends. Long-term-yard-sale-study offers a guide to things you need to be cautious about including in your already-over-cluttered life. Coffee makers, holiday decorations, and water bottles are examples of things that grace almost every yard sale table and that almost never get sold. They've saturated our landscape. If you know how frequently people cast these aside, you know you should never spend good money on these. (If you really need another coffee maker, you beg one off of a friend who has a spare one cluttering up her closet.)
Mostly, though, the reason that it's taken me so long to pull all this together is that I'm overwhelmed by the wastefulness of it all. Yes, it's a bit of a thrill to come back from a day of yard-sales with a treasure-trove of goods (8 pairs of shoes, clothes, kitchen items, books, cereal and pasta, lamps) having spent a grand total of $0 --- in fact, the boys earned $31 by helping other people haul their purchases to the car, so we actually made money that day. But it's just saddening to see so much stuff, originally purchased for real money, being cast aside without a thought. Rugs and refrigerators, sofas and sandals, presents still in the wrapping paper and warm coats with the tags still in them . . . this mountain of material goods must have looked good while it was still in the mall, but lying in heaps at the yard sale, it just looked like a monument to waste.
Which brings me back to my first thought: this is why I don't go to stores. Don't I already have enough clutter? What the heck are we doing to our lives and to our planet when we pretend that buying stuff we don't even want is a form of entertainment?
Part of me wants to say: Never go to Stores. Once I was introduced to the yard-sale way of hunting and gathering, even so-called-thrift stores became a rare occasional foray, such as for a time I suddenly discovered I needed an extremely-cold-weather running shoe. At yard sales, I regularly buy clothing for less than a dollar an item, which beats so-called-thrift-store prices hands down.
Part of me wants to say: Now is the time to check out colleges. (Not for education, mind you, but for all the stuff that students leave behind). The particular giant yard sale that my family immersed ourselves in is one that my college runs. Now that exams are over, students who are fleeing the school leave piles and piles of things behind them. Instead of carting everything straight to nearby landfills, my college asks students to donate usable items, and we sell them to our townies, donating the proceeds to a local women's shelter.
This year, as always, students donated mounds of clothing, furniture, electronics, food, books, jewelry, and gifts. Even with almost zero advertising and with Miser Mom in charge of setting bargain basement pricing (a grocery bag of food for $3; a bag of clothes for $3), we raised $800. And there were mounds of goods left unsold.
Part of me wants to say: yard sales are a guidebook for knowing what you might want and what you don't. Especially at our college yard sale, you get to see in a tangible way "what's hot, and what's not". A few years ago, the students were casting aside flip flops and UnderArmor. (Is it just me, or does that clothing really mimic StarTrek?). Nowadays, it's flats and athletics shoes. Also new on the scene this year were more water-pitchers-with-built-in-filters than I'd ever seen before.
But it's not just that a glimpse at a single yard sale can tell you about trends. Long-term-yard-sale-study offers a guide to things you need to be cautious about including in your already-over-cluttered life. Coffee makers, holiday decorations, and water bottles are examples of things that grace almost every yard sale table and that almost never get sold. They've saturated our landscape. If you know how frequently people cast these aside, you know you should never spend good money on these. (If you really need another coffee maker, you beg one off of a friend who has a spare one cluttering up her closet.)
Mostly, though, the reason that it's taken me so long to pull all this together is that I'm overwhelmed by the wastefulness of it all. Yes, it's a bit of a thrill to come back from a day of yard-sales with a treasure-trove of goods (8 pairs of shoes, clothes, kitchen items, books, cereal and pasta, lamps) having spent a grand total of $0 --- in fact, the boys earned $31 by helping other people haul their purchases to the car, so we actually made money that day. But it's just saddening to see so much stuff, originally purchased for real money, being cast aside without a thought. Rugs and refrigerators, sofas and sandals, presents still in the wrapping paper and warm coats with the tags still in them . . . this mountain of material goods must have looked good while it was still in the mall, but lying in heaps at the yard sale, it just looked like a monument to waste.
Which brings me back to my first thought: this is why I don't go to stores. Don't I already have enough clutter? What the heck are we doing to our lives and to our planet when we pretend that buying stuff we don't even want is a form of entertainment?
Oh, I'm so glad your school does that! My school has some foundation come to pick up donations, but we are so disorganized in getting donations from kids that most stuff ends up in the dumpsters. I usually dumpster dive, but my roundness this year will likely prevent that.
ReplyDeleteIt is my hope to perhaps organize a giant garage sale like this (complete with similar rock-bottom prices) in future years. I am impressed by yours and would love to know more about how this gets organized. Are students in charge of bringing their stuff to a central location, or are there collections in the dorms that someone brings to the sale place?
This is a DARNED good question. The first year we did this, the sale was organized by an energetic senior who'd been hired back at the college as an intern, and she just convinced everyone to do this. But she only stuck around for a year. So the project has gotten passed around from student to student, who all seem to be enthusiastic but who have had decreasing levels of effectiveness (i.e., this year, we had almost no advertising).
DeleteThis year, the students who organized it were seniors, and they haven't found replacements for themselves. I'm very very worried that we won't have this sale in the future, because it's so dang much work to organize. It's like belling the cat; every mouse thinks it's necessary, but mouse one wants to be the one to do it. Part of my summer is trying to round up an office who'd be willing, not to run this event, but to hire an intern who would run this event.. Not much luck (yet).
I might write a very boring (to most people) post about how to do this. Just for you!
A lot of stuff isn't worth expending energy to ship across the country. It isn't that it's useless clutter, just that it'll be easy to replace a few states away. (Rugs, water bottles, and refrigerators, for example.)
ReplyDeleteMy undergrad collected discarded stuff and sold it, but my graduate school actually PAID to have it taken to the dumpster, even perfectly usable dorm furniture (I convinced them to let the undergrads and grad RAs get first dibs on things like desks and dressers and bookcases, which is why some of our current grown-up furniture is really good quality dorm furniture that just needed refinishing or maybe an additional nail here or there to look nice).
I agree with you about not being worth it to ship across the country . . . except that that argument doesn't apply as much here. The stuff we sell is taken almost exclusively from our freshman/sophomore dorms -- that is, from students who are going to return next year. They could store things in nearby storage (for a small fee). And a huge proportion of our students live within relatively easy driving distance.
DeleteRumor has it, many years ago the cleaning crews used to pilfer stuff from students who were leaving the college. That's the reason why now, EVERYTHING that students leave behind them in the dorm MUST go in the trash, no exceptions, unless the students put their things in the "donate to the yard sale" boxes, and no one is allowed to go through the dorms the day after move-out day to take useable items. What a tragic waste!
In my undergrad the summer sale was run by the cleaning crews!
DeleteAlso we were only allowed a small box for storage between years, so unless you had a friend with a garage living nearby or one staying at the school over summer a lot of stuff did cost less to re-buy the next year than to ship back home.
My college collects stuff in the spring and then SAVES it all summer to sell to the next batch of students in the fall.
ReplyDeleteWow! That must take a lot of storage space! I think my own college (a) doesn't have the space, (b) would freak out about liability issues, and (c) doesn't have the staffing power to host a sale in the fall. So I'm in awe of you and yours!
DeleteI used to teach at a private college and the affluent students used to dump their Birkenstocks and books. When my son was in college, the school set up dumpsters under the dorm windows and students (not my kid) would throw things from the windows. Truly horrifying.
ReplyDelete