This past Saturday we held our first community charity yard sale to help raise funds for our adoption. We spread the word to our friends that we would be hosting a yard sale about 3 weeks prior to the sale, and opened up our garage for donations. People were super generous and were unloading their goods at our place to sell almost immediately. My original intent for the sale was simply to get rid of my massive stash of baby items just sitting in totes in my garage. I had far too many items for having just one more baby, of which most had been handed down to me. Before I knew it, our whole garage was full of donations and I hadn't even touched my totes yet. Three days prior to the sale I went through the totes and got rid of about 60% of my things, which ended up being thousands of baby clothes, and other items!
On Friday, Keiffer spent the entire day making about 6 trips back and forth to our friends Ken and Lisa Becker's home, where the yard sale would be. More donations were dropped off by some of our friends and Keiffer also made a few trips to other friends' homes picking up a few larger items, including a futon, TV and table. At home I was making signs, gathering up last minute things, cutting thank you cards, and panicking that I wasn't going to pull everything off the next morning. I didn't have any solid volunteers, and the sale was advertised to start at 7am. I had two large banners I wanted people to hold out on the main road, 7 arrow signs directing traffic our way that I needed set up, and more people to help me set the sale up and price things. Way too many tasks for just one person to undertake, but it was looking like that was what was going to happen.
Once Keiffer made his last drop off that night, I headed to the house to start setting up the tables and tent. I was tired from all the preparation work and wasn't feeling like I was going to make it another few hours doing the necessary set up. When I got to the Becker's home, three of my their kids were sitting in the garage playing dress up with the donated clothes. It was such a blessing to me because they kept me awake and entertained, and were a huge help. They helped me in the dark to set up all the tables, unload one last truck full of things and put the tent up. I discovered the coolest thing, which I had never tried before. A head lamp! I don't know what I ever did without one. That thing worked so well, and was the only way I could see what I was doing!
The next morning I woke up at 4am, got ready and headed to set up. When I got there it was obviously pitch dark, and I couldn't find a light switch in the garage. I later found out there wasn't one. Fortunately someone had donated a table with a lamp attached, so I plugged it in and it was just the right amount of light. Tender mercies from the lord I say! At 5:15am, a van pulled up and I got a little nervous. About 5:30am three people came out of it in the heavy fog and asked if this was the yard sale, like they were ready to shop. I said, yes, but it doesn't start until 7am. They couldn't speak much English, but said okay and went back and sat in their van waiting. That got me so stressed out. I didn't have anything out of the garage yet and all of the tables were soaked because of the heavy fog. The only people I knew who were coming to help were the missionaries from our church, but not until 6:30am. I was supposed to run and pick up a babysitter and bring her back to the house to watch our kids while Keiffer came with me back to the garage sale, but that plan had to change since people were already waiting in their car for the sale to start!
I tried my best to start pulling things out of the garage, but hadn't opened any of the bags or boxes before three trucks full of people came at 6am!! Then I went into real panic mode. It was really strange because all of these people were Hispanic and had big trucks full of other pieces of furniture, like they had been going to sales all week. I told them all the sale didn't start until 7am and I didn't even have everything out of the garage yet or even priced, but they all started breaking open bags, roaming into the garage and piling things up! It was total insanity. I was the only person there, the sun was just coming up and I had three groups of people wanting me to price the things they had in their piles. The very first sale I had was a couple who live in Mexico and just come over here to San Diego to get things at garage sales and bring them back over the border. They bought a ton of stuff from bouncers, walkers, a television, you name it! More people started pouring in and by the time my friend Mary got there to help I was totally overwhelmed as I had people pulling me in every direction asking questions and buying things. Right after that Keiffer and the missionaries arrived to help, and also the Becker family had woken up and came out. Everything got taken out of the garage and set up, but we had so much stuff that half of the clothes, blankets and household items couldn't even fit on the tables! They were being spread all over the ground or left completely in the bags! We really did have enough stuff for three yard sales!
The flow of people was steady for hours. Some young men from our church came in a large group. They had come from some meeting for something and were willing to move some heavier items for us, and also go out on the road and hold up some banners to get the traffic continually flowing our way. Later we had another set of our friends from church come and help hold the signs out on the road. The sale had been going on for at least 5 hours or so before any pictures were taken, so all of the pictures on this post are AFTER the mad rush, and look at how much more stuff we had!
We sold 6 dozen Krispy Creme donuts and juice in addition to our regular yard sale items. It was fun for everyone to participate in selling them. Lots of friends from our church came to support us, but we also got to meet a bunch of wonderful new people. Keiffer and I had long conversations with a few of them which gave us a nice little boost of enthusiasm for what we are embarking on. One woman had adopted domestically and was just thrilled that someone else was going to enjoy the blessings of adopting, and she wanted to be a part of it by donating. Another woman was just over the moon about our cause and that she was able to help by purchasing things. It was such a relief that everything was going well, that people were in fact coming to our sale, and that the whole thing was looking like a big success.
The night before the sale, I asked Keiffer how much he thought we would make from the sale. In my mind I was thinking, $700, but wanted to see his response. He replied, "$700". I was shocked. My exact number! Well, when I counted everything up at about 1pm, when the crowd had really died down, we were at $800! We had exceeded our expectations and I felt a great sense of relief. I felt so blessed that the Lord had delivered. That so many people wanted to help us out by donating their items, time, and resources.
Here is a little list of of gratitude we have for our friends. Thank you to the Kingsford family, the Koopman family, Meg Snipes, the Tyler family, the Jones family, Suzi Camp, the Stevens family, the Fisher family, the MacArthur family, the the Miller family, the Anderson family, the McClure family, and the Becker family for donating items to sell. Thank you to the Becker family for providing the location, helping us set up and sell, babysitting and providing lunch. Thank you to Allie Dean for babysitting our little ones while we were at the sale. Thank you to the Butner's for lending us your truck. Thank you to the Elders, the Kuemmerle's, the Cook's and the Young Men for helping us set up, sell and hold up signs. Thank you to all of our friends from church that we saw shopping and supporting us. Thank you to all of the strangers who came and helped in our efforts to rescue an orphan. We are so blessed to have so many people who care about us and support what we are doing. And to everyone I am forgetting right now, THANK YOU! I am sorry if your name didn't pop in my head as I am writing this. It's not because you are anything less than wonderful, I am just having a brain fart ;)
So, our yard sale was such a tremendous success, and we literally still have about half of what was in the sale to begin with, that we have decided to go another round and have another sale this Saturday! Same location. Toward the end of the sale we had neighbors bringing over more things to sell, the family who purchased the futon ended up donating a sofa, chair and scooters, so there are more things that people didn't even get to see. It is so cool! So we will see what happens this weekend.
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