Garage Sale Etiquette
Posted: Monday, May 16, 2011
by Dianne Lehmann
Artisan Jewelry from SyZyGy
Twice a year, our community has a community-wide garage sale. Our property owner's association advertises it in the local newspapers and you would not believe the response. One of Bernd's (my husband) co-workers told him recently that she was eagerly anticipating the upcoming garage sale. Oh joy.
There is one in May and one in October. Both are held on Saturdays. I'm always glad when I don't have to go anywhere on a garage sale Saturday. Just getting out of the complex is an exercise in obstacle avoidance and care to not run down any unsuspecting pedestrians. This is not made easy by their propensity to dart will-he nil-he into the road. It's just nuts. And worrying about someone suddenly opening their driver's side door right into my oncoming vehicle makes me glad when I finally get to the highway.
As I have observed over the years, there seem to be a lot of rules of etiquette surrounding attending our community garage sale and I'd like to present a few of them here:
1. Park wherever you like. Our streets are all fire lanes and normally there is no on-street parking because there would not be enough room for emergency vehicles to pass. This rule is suspended for the day. Even so, a little sense could be applied, as in park as far off of the street as you can, but not in people's front yards please. Years ago, we had to put a small block wall at the front of our yard along the road to keep people from parking on our landscaping. Seriously.
2. Keep your eyes firmly on your goal. Once you have parked your car in the middle of the road, get out and make directly for whatever it was that caught your eye. Do not, I repeat, do not take your eyes off of it. Do not look right or left before crossing the road. We have a 25 mile per hour speed limit throughout our community and it gets effectively even slower than that on garage sale day, but even so, a person should look before crossing. Really.
3. Join in plenty of conversations with friends and neighbors. And the absolute best place to do that is right in the middle of the road. Bring the kids and the dogs and stop for as long as you like. Pay no attention to the cars wishing to drive by you; made more difficult by all the cars lining both sides of the road and reducing it to a single, very small lane in the middle. One year I actually had to honk the horn in order to get their attention and then I had to wave them out of the road. Wasn't it obvious that I wanted to get by?
4. Turn your car around wherever you like. Do not drive down to the end of the street and use the intersection to turn around. Turn as sharply as you can to leave as many black marks as you possibly can or disturb as much landscaping as you can. Use whatever driveway or bit of earth that your heart desires because turning around and going the other way right at the very moment you wish to do it is the absolute most important thing on this earth.
5. Use your I'm-standing-in-front-of-a-jet-engine voice at all times. At minimum, use your talking-on-a-cell-phone-in-public voice. If you are up and about at 7:00 a.m. on a Saturday morning then, obviously, everyone else should be as well. In both May and October, the overnight lows are high enough that Bernd and I leave some of our windows open all night. We like fresh air when we sleep and after a winter of being tightly closed up in the house we grab all of it that we can. So all that yelling can be fairly annoying.
6. If you don't own a diesel powered pick-up truck, rent one for the day. It will make getting all of those wonderful bargains home so much easier and will really mess up all that nice fresh air. Not to mention the production of additional noise. Always a necessary part of garage sale shopping.
Just so you don't think it's all sour grapes on my part, we did participate several years ago and we took advantage of the hordes (and I mean hordes) of eager shoppers. We got rid of all sorts of junk (some of it was very good junk … if that is not an oxymoron) … for very cheap prices. We sold off enough stuff to buy two security screen doors and all the new hardware. As a result, we've really enjoyed being able to leave the front and back doors open all night during the summer to help cool off the house. Just don't ask us to leave them open on garage sale Saturdays. Ain't gonna happen.
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Top-level comments on this article: (5 total)Hi Dianne. I love these rules! I will remember them next time - you know me, always wanting proper etiquette :-) Nice job as always!Hi Teresa.
Somehow I can't see you being anything less than courteous and considerate! But at some point or another we all need to develop our curmudgeonly side a bit (some people might say I've given it too much of chance). Garage sales might be a good place to start. :)
Hugs,
Dianne
We too have an annual street sale only I love it! It's like a little carnival of sorts. One of the neighbours barbeques hotdogs and sells soft drinks as well. There are hordes of people like you describe and most are very friendly and want to chat forever. But I can imagine for those wanting to get down the road or sleep in, it's next to impossible. You are wise not to leave your garage door open on that day, people tend to think whatever they see is up for grabs that day! Fun article Dianne!Hi Brianna.
One of our neighbors across the street is an older couple and they grew up with the same mind set that my mom did ... when you are up and ready to receive visitors, you open you garage door so that friends and neighbors will know that it is okay to come over. So, they open their garage door on garage sale Saturday just as they always do. They get to talk to all sorts of people that way. :)
It sounds like your street sale is a lot more polite (but then you ARE Canadian :)) than ours. I could get behind that.
Thanks for reading!
Hugs,
DianneThat's so cute. I'd never heard of that before, leaving the door open for that reason. Our sales are usually pretty polite, no fights have broken out just yet. lol
hi dianne,
that was an amusing, light hearted and cute article. i smiled through it.
i hope all is well and the horse back riding is still in progress,
my best,
sueHi Sue.
I'm glad I could bring a smile to your face!
All is well and the horse riding is still progressing. We are getting better and better all the time. He's a great horse and I still feel lucky and honored to be able to ride him.
I hope that all is well with you and yours!
Hugs,
Dianne
What a completely organized and thorough breakdown of the Garage Sale proposition with all of the attendent "must do's". I especially like the "Jet Engine Voice". This article is something you could print out and circulate during the Sale.Hi Christofer.
Ha, ha. Very funny. Actually, you've made me smile.
Thanks for reading! And commenting!
Hugs,
Dianne
Hey hey for garage sale etiquette. I like the subtle humor in the telling of this tale - Frankly, when it comes to garage sales, many ladies (and some overeager males) lose all left over remnants of manners, never mind etiquette. Just think of this - you could live near someone that has a running tag sale. Don't you know someone like that? They've always got something for sale even if it's not a full-blown tag sale.
We're lucky here since we're so far out in the country (if Connecticut can have anything that's so far out from anywhere) that no one could find us anyway.Hi Heidi.
Looks like you and I are catching up on our reading today. :)
Yes, there is a family down the street that seems to have a garage sale about every other weekend. Luckily they are at the other end of the street and we don't get much "fallout" from it.
Sometimes, when I look at a map of Connecticut (or any of the eastern seaboard states for that matter), I wonder how you all find any room to do anything. :) Seems like all those roads alone would take up most of the livable space. As you might guess, I like my wide open spaces.
Anyway, thanks for reading and commenting!
More hugs,
DianneThere, it wasn't a far reach about the neighbor that has sales all the time. It's kind of like the one house that has all the beat up cars in the yard or kids toys everywhere that never get picked up.
You're so right about Connecticut and the congestion. We really do have people numbers and with that come many roads and infrastructure etc. That's why our little spot in the state is so precious. We're in a town that has only 800 some people. No house can have less than 3 acres and we have two state forests. We have several very large land owners. For now, at least, we are safe from more people encroachment and more roads. I too love wide open spaces.
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