Our first garage sale- fun fun fun.

The place where we are living has a "community garage sale" once a year. Basically, whoever wanted to participate would just set up their own sale in their garage/yard. After debating back and forth, we decided to have our first one ever. Part of the reason is because I wanted to get rid of few big items which had been moved from apartment to our old house to our basement right now, all they did were just collecting dust. And I thought it would be a fun family event. There is always a saying "Someone's junk might be someone else's treasures", so I was thinking, why not.

Friday evening was supposed to be a non-advertised preview night within the community. I had everything set up during Yoshi's nap time and gave it a try right after our early dinner. Initially I was worry that I might not be able to keep my eyes on Yoshi during the sale by myself (Nori was still at work), but luckily it was a very quiet night. Not many people came by (perhaps because Friday wasn't an official sale day). And guess what, actually Yoshi was busy doing his business preparation..........................

Yoshi was very busy making phone calls to his buddies and conducting market pricing research...(see below video for detail phone conversation)

He was also busy guarding our "money tin"(side note: this is Yoshi's new sandles for this summer)

The official garage sale is today (Saturday), all of us woke up very early in the morning to get our business opened by 9a.m There was already tons of customers drove by. (today was perfect weather for outdoor activities. And there are 5 communities nearby having the garage sale on the same day, what a popular event)

This dining set was our biggest selling item(s). This was left behind from Nori's parents 12 years ago when they moved back to Japan. we used this at our previous house till we moved here. (Obaa-chan, Ojii-chan, do u recognize this?) So guess what, after a long day of work (sitting around, cleaning garage while waiting, playing with the tricycle, keep marking down the item prices ^_^), we did pretty good. First of all, the customers turn out was great, huge crowded (both window shopping and actual buyers). We were lucky that we had lots of neighbours on the same street having sale also, so it gained some attention. Anyway, within 6 hrs, we made a total sale of $82 (US), with 27 items sold, including the dining set above which were sold for $30 to the lucky buyer. We were very happy for the result. Actually, I think we enjoyed the idea of getting rid of things we don't need in exchange for some spare cash. And having many customers came by, this already made the normal Saturday so much more interesting and fun. Overall, everyone were very nice & friendly. Some of them would bargain here and there, which was fine. The only lady that I didn't care much- she was interested in an item marked $3, and she said with an unfriendly demanding tone: "I'm only going to give u $1!!"....well, customer first, right?! It was a fun day.

Anyway, out of the total $82, we made a profit of $78.50, why? Well, after having a good business day, it's time to reward our hard working employee- Yoshi. Despite my worry of keeping Yoshi within sight, in fact, he was always by our side. I believe he was the one who enjoy the most out of the day. He was definitely the best "greeter", everytime, yes it's EVERYTIME when someone came by, he would wave his hand and said "HI". Not once, but twice or more. (wished I had taped it, but didn't want to scare our customers away). So, what's his compensation?

Here is the video of Yoshi making his serious businiess phone calls the night before the sale. He was probably collecting some market pricing information, and also advertising our sale to his buddies....