Garage Sale

I have been offline in the blog world. This past week was sheer craziness. All week the church was flooded with donations for our spring Community Garage Sale. We accepted anything but electronics (although a few televisions managed to appear). Flowers, bar stools, tables, chairs, games, clothes even a toilet compost insinuator. Yes, all kinds of things. With so many items it took two evenings to price and sort everything.

Lots of donations

More donations!

Tuesday evening a group rallied the youth room to make a small dent in the organization process. I was not here as I was at a wedding in Fargo, ND. This is when I'm glad to have so many willing volunteers. I arrived in office Wednesday morning and we feeling rather good about the situation downstairs. As the day went on more, and more donations piled up. Thursday and Friday the same thing-more donation.

Flowers anyone?

If only the pink flowers were blue, it would make a perfect wedding centerpiece for us

This called for an extra pricing time. Friday evening I had connections service rehearsal with the vocal and guitar players. Immediately following practice it was price tags, stickers, masking tape, and sharpies to conquer the youth room donations.

In addition to donations from church members we also did something new this year. We offered a space rental for $20.00 to those in the community. $20.00 got you a space and whatever you sold was your profit. This was a good way to make it a community event and also not exhaust our congregation resources. Often times I think the congregation gives, and gives, and gives, to the youth so it's good to fund raise outside the church; not to mention a great outreach opportunity.

Our renters setting up

Lot's of stuff from community garage space renters

In the weeks previous I had revived phone calls from 17 space rentals clients. Some of these I gathered money up front others I did not. The day of the garage sale arrived. It was a dreary, cold, and cloudy day but at least it was not raining. We had 9 of the 17 renters show up. While I would have like to have all 17 show up it was great to have 9 as 17 would have been a lot. Hopefully next year we will get them all.

The morning of the garage sale was a blur. I arrived at church at ten-to-seven, I pulled out the old yard signs from the 2009 VBS and taped the publicity signs. I was grateful to have Jo, as she and I strategized where best to put up the 8 signs we had. After figuring it out on the white board we divided and conquered. I put up signs all along the Chugiak, Eagle River, and Peter's Creek communities.

The signs are ready to go

The strategic planning of where to place the signs-thanks Jo!

Prime advertising spot right there!

While I was putting up signs the youth and members of our YMT (Youth Ministry Team) moved the tables (full of items, mind you) from inside the youth room to outside in front of the church. Our space renters set-up among them a cotton candy, and face painting booth.

Cotton candy and face painting-we were not expecting this booth type of booth at a garage sale but we LOVE IT

9:00am rolled around and shoppers flooded the parking lot. There were so many people we had trouble with parking since the church parking lot is not the largest to begin with and now was taken up by garage sale booths.

Anne & Sally lounging out on some of the patio furniture. They had to make sure it worked before selling :)

Sally directed traffic and once we got the rhythm figured out the sale went off without a hitch. The preparation for this event was crazy but when everything was rolling it was rather fun. I got to browse a lot of neat things including an authentic 1962 barbie doll which was way cool but also way over my budget. I instead opted for a bag of $2.00 cotton candy.

In addition to the garage sale we also sold bake sale items. We had planned to sell soda pop, and lemonade but it was so cold so we instead brewed coffee and hot chocolate. It was darn, cold, and I regretted not wearing my winter jacket (the thought crossed my mind once or twice). The sun did not shine but the rain held off as it got caught on the other side of the mountains.

Baked goods and our church cook books

With one hour left of the garage sale we dubbed that anything you could fit in a grocery bag was $1.00. This was to get rid of stuff to make less work when it was all over. In the final hour we even managed to sell the toilet/compost incinerator which was a great relief because we doubted that the Salvation Army would have accepted it.

The lovely compost incinerator

With the garage sale ended we once again sorted out items. A pile for the fall silent auction at church, a pile for the Salvation Army, and a pile for the dump. We managed to exchange two of the more....how do you say "retro" youth room couches for two newer, better condition couches that didn't sell at the sale.

Dump load

With vehicle packed up ready to leave to their respective places I took of to collect garage sale signs. An hour later and I was spent. My office a disaster, and things to put away, but it could wait. After all tomorrow would be an even bigger day than this.