Saturday, November 9, 2013

Always Hussling

Today we held a garage sale at my grandma's soon-to-be former house.  It's been a long time in coming, as we've all been working for the past few months to help her move into a new residence (independent living, where she can have all kinds of fun with the other people there without the upkeep of a house to handle), and now she's finally there.  So the time has come for her to divest herself of a bunch of stuff she'll no longer need and some she just doesn't want to keep anymore.  It's a good thing.

Anyway, garage sale.  Our whole family was there, helping out, making sure customers got to see everything available (some bigger and more fragile things were inside the house, since we sure as shootin' weren't going to haul a refrigerator, washer, and dryer outside) and no one was pilfering from the kitty.  But frankly, garage sale administration is pretty boring.  Especially for a 9 year old and a 5 year old with pent up energy.  Quite often they turned into pint sized salespeople, and it was absolutely hilarious watching them encourage a random neighbor to buy an ancient ashtray or toy slot machine (I'm not even kidding a little bit).

At one point, both kids were wandering around inside the house while customers checked out the crystal and glassware we had set up in the kitchen.  I heard a lot of muttering and saw that the customers were heading out the door empty handed.  Sammy and Sabrina were following them.  Sammy, with his completely uncontrolled volume, thanked them profusely for even looking, and then Sabrina chimed in:

"You can also give us a donation."

The girl has learned a few things from the last 8 - yes, 8 - weeks of fundraisers selling popcorn, cookie dough, tupperware, pies, and burritos (giant question mark on that inventory list) about how to elicit just a little bit more money out of patrons.  Although requests for charitable giving at a garage sale may be new territory.  Gotta admire her chutzpah.

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