The Clean Up, Clean Out, Market "Garage" Sale

David and I completely agree on trying to live more simple, clutter-free lives. Of course that means different things to different people. Very Different. He laughs now about wanting to have everything he owned able to fill up the back of a pick-up. Less Stuff.

Then he married. He married a woman with more than one pair of shoes. Then he had a child. And another. And another. And another. Then he accused his wife of not being very sentimental (it was a fairly accurate description, I LOVE to clean out and throw away).

We are a family of SIX, we home educate our children. We have a home filled with books and games and pictures and fun. In an attempt to save things (sentimental) that matter, and get rid of things that don't, we do clean ups and clean outs quite often.

I have had the notion to do a small 'garage sale' for awhile. But after returning from my women's retreat, the session on organization, and hearing a mom tell tale of selling cupcakes in a Thai Market, my idea grew into a full- scale assault on our house.

We have an office space somewhere else, our goal has always been to have everything we own in our own home (no storage), and not even in a garage type space. We were already managing by this goal pretty well.. The bits of old furniture we do have at the office is stuff I would willingly give away, and it is not much. Now my goal was to create storage space in our home. A home with no built in closets. We have three closets, two pretty big sized and some other cabinet spaces, as well as many book shelves.

I went through everyone's clothes. Even ones in boxes saved for Gabrielle, I took out a LOT of them (a three year old doesn't need 15 dresses). I went through every thing and got rid of stuff we hadn't used in a long time. I bake a lot but still have a pretty minimalist kitchen (for westerners! for Easterners, my kitchen has a TON of stuff). The folks here cook well with one wok and one spoon, some rice bowls, chopsticks and just a few other things.

I put a lot of books, English and Chinese in the 'sell' box. I got rid of Linens we never use.

I got everyone on board and the girls helped bake cookies to sell! They were so excited. In the end we decided we would drive our car to the nearby market and set up our own little stand.

we had stuff ranging in price from 2 yuan to 20 yuan.

Sophia made the signs for the cookies...

And there we went. The first place we set up was not a great venue, so we moved.
But here was their first customer. She bought a cookie. This was before I set up all our other stuff. This was perhaps the first time I have asked a Chinese stranger to take a picture with my kids, it always goes the other way.

I gave them an example of how to tell people what you are selling: 'Come buy home-made cookies! American cookies!' Had they been a little older they would have been embarrassed by me. But they loved it.

They have a toy cash register that has a working calculator.

When we moved closer to the market entrance and David arrived, we started getting things all set up. People didn't quite know what to make of us, the foreign spectacle selling used goods (I had signs that said 'second hand goods' written on it). Nothing was moving at first and I uttered my disappoint to David about time-wasting and he immediately became an amazing salesman. Oh My. He surprised me. It snowballed, and we were surrounded.

A lady selling rabbits parked next to us, She wooed our kids well, and we refused to buy them a rabbit (remember the chick? I kept reminding them). I had to admit the rabbits were super cute.

But I was busy wheeling and dealing. The goal? All must go. So prices dropped quickly during any lull in the action.

The cookie prices dropped too and they sold out.
Used clothes are not sold here, so this really put some people off. Many, many times we heard: "oh, they are already worn..." walk away.
One lady made this same statement, literally shuddered in disgust and walked away. David and I looked at each other and laughed out loud.

The books were a hit. We had some great Chinese Kindergarten books (and still have more). We found when we lowered the price too much people felt like they were stealing from us...these were simple market goers, They weren't poor people. They didn't want charity.

Our family had a blast doing this. It was a bit of work, The entire clean out was completely worth it. I am not sure how much money we made. But we made a lasting impression on some people. We returned home with one small box of clothes and a big empty trunk that we gave to our helper (who had first dibs on anything anyway). As we walked back the gate guard asked if we had sold it all, how did she know what we were doing? Word gets around folks!