To Go To Yard Sales

Its called "Yard-Saling." And yes, for all you English language guru's, it is a verb. At least in our household it is used as one!

I can't really remember when we starting yard-saling, but I know I was pretty young. Mom and Dad would get out the Basin Nickel Ads on Friday night and we would highlight all of the yard sales. Back in the day they weren't as organized in the ad as they are now. You really had to search through all the miscellanous section to find the yard sales. We then would wake up early on Saturday morning and pile into our 1986 Chevy Suburban and head to Vernal. It didn't matter how many people were going. You always took the 'Burb just in case you found something sizeable.

We learned something valuable in our first year of yard-saling. This is a competitive sport. You've all heard the saying, "The early bird gets the worm." Now imagine that the worm is on this incredible discount, there is only 1 worm, and there are dozens of birds that want, nay need, the same worm. That is yard-saling. Kinda. Less worms and more junk, but you get the idea. We found that highlighting the yard sales just wasn't good enough. We needed a map.

p.s.-sometimes people will put in their yard sale ad, "No early birds" which is really making sense to me right now. Back to the map....

Usually our map was just two lines that intersected somewhere in the middle of the page and a quickly drawn "N" at the top to symbolize north (bet ya didn't see that one coming....!). Now Friday nights consisted of highlighting the yard sales, drawing our map, and then trying to put the yard sale on the correct spot. Sometimes we even went as far as to number the sales so that we had an order to go to them in.

Another valuable lesson from our first year. There was a "Man in the Blue Van" that always bought the stuff we wanted right before we could get there! This led to us getting up earlier and possibly attending the sales as "Early Birds". Turns out people aren't as strict on the "No Early Bird" policy as you would think. Ha! However, if this method still had us running into the "Man in the Blue Van," we just had to cut our losses and move to another section of town, all the while praying that he hadn't already been there. Competition was stiff.

I'm not sure how much yard-saling really paid off. I can't recall anything that I bought that I just couldn't live without. However, that is kind of the beauty of the yard sale weekend. You can go to the yard sales, buy whatever you want, and if you get home and decide you hate everything, you only wasted $10-$20 bucks. Try doing that at the mall!

I also learned awesome bartering skills. If I ever need to flee the country and live somewhere else, I'm good on the bartering front. So what if $1 is a great price for that item? Offer them $0.50 just to see if they will take it! I would say that 80% of the time, you can talk them down from their already ridiculously low price. And the feeling that you get after you have bartered a little bit is purely magical. Seriously.

So lets zoom forward to the present day. I'm a gainfully employed 24-year-old with a working husband and a baby on the way. Some would say that I no longer need to go yard-saling because I can afford to just go to the store. They would be wrong. Not technically. I could just go to the store, but I really like yard-saling! My entire family still goes almost every weekend, and it is one of the highlights of my week! Plus, it just makes sense. Some people are selling really nice stuff and if you are willing to spend a couple extra hours driving around and looking at some people's junk, you can find these items and save a ton of money! I'll give ya a list of the baby things I've found this year at yard sales and what I paid for them. I will then include the prices from Babies-R-Us or another website. I think it will blow your mind:

Johnny-Jump Up Yard-Sale: $10 Target: $25
Winter Car Seat Cover Yard-Sale: $2 Babies-R-Us: $50
Maternity Capris Yard-Sale: $2 Motherhood Maternity: $30
Maternity Shirt Yard-Sale: $0.25 Motherhood Maternity: $25 (Shirt in previous post from 23 weeks)
Maternity Dress Yard-Sale: $1 Motherhood Maternity: $30
Catepillar Book Yard-Sale: $1 Wal-Mart: $13
Wood Changing Table Yard-Sale: $6 Target: $80
AngelCare Baby Monitor (w/sensing pad) Yard-Sale: $5 Babies-R-Us: $125!!!
Boppy Pillow Yard-Sale: $5 (plus dry cleaning) Babies-R-Us: $45
Baby Sling Yard-Sale: $2 Babies-R-Us: about $40-$70. I couldn't find one on the internet that is as nice as the one I got. It isn't one of those cheap, thin fabric ones. It is heavy, padded, and it has straps so the baby can't fall down inside and suffocate like the cheap ones, so this is just a guess.
Baby Chest Carrier Yard-Sale: $3 Babies-R-Us: $70

Total for yard-sales: $37.25
Total for store-bought: $533

And I am not buying the crappy, nasty looking stuff either! This is seriously good, clean baby stuff. It blows my mind that I have saved almost $500 just by spending a few hours on the weekend running around Vernal.

There are probably a few things I wouldn't want to buy for a baby at a yard sale. Car seats come to mind. There are a lot of them, but I wouldn't want to use one that had been in an accident. That just seems unsafe. Breastpumps. I think this one is obvious, but is would just feel weird to strap that sucker on knowing it had touched another woman like that before. Gross. I'll be buying that brand-spanking new. But that is seriously some of the only items that I wouldn't get. Everything else can be purchased and dry-cleaned.

So to anyone thinking about trying out yard-saling, good for you. To those who still think it is weird-you're probably right. I am a little strange. But I like it!