Garage Sales

This weekend was garage sale weekend in our little town. Most of our town is a series of HOA's, and garage sales aren't allowed. It's one of those strange little rules that I don't think about most of the time, since I'm more a sell-it-on Craigslist kind of gal than a garage sale gal. To appease those who like to have garage sales, the town has a twice yearly, town-wide garage sale. I've found that people who live in neighboring towns come over to our little town to check it all out!

Last year I got a lot of size 3 and 4 clothes for Caitlin, as her hand-me-downs only went up to 2T. This year, all I wanted was a TV stand. Brian is seriously considering some huge flat panel TV, and we'd like to put our old TV in the basement for watching DVD's (and maybe TV, whenever we get a converter box). I drove around yesterday, but with Caitlin and her friend Mattie in tow (as Mattie's mom was holding a sale herself), I didn't get much done. Today I drove around again, stopping occasionally, and managed to find a decent little TV stand for a price I was willing to pay. I also found a box of random Legos for Brandon. He was thrilled! Both kids were not excited about the fact that I insisted on washing them with dish soap and some Basic-G germicide before we played with them. But they were ready to be rinsed and dried after we got back from dinner. We are a little worried by the huge snake head and various fake spiders that were in the box, but they all say Lego, so we're assuming they're from some boxed set that we don't know about. Maybe the "How to Mess With Your Mom" set, but who knows?

I was struck by the sheer amount of stuff people were selling. A friend of mine asked for donations for her garage sale to raise money for an upcoming trip to Mexico (and she did, praise God, make around $400 more that she even hoped for!). But for all those other sales, where is all this stuff coming from? It brought the cycles of consumerism and consumption to light in a harsh, glaring sort of way. We (as a general population) have so much stuff. So much baby gear, so many clothes (oh my gosh were there clothes!). I try to be picky about what I allow into my house. I have enough stuff already! And I'm constantly purging (mostly kid stuff, but mine, too). Maybe I'm still fearful we'll move to a small house. Maybe it's just me. But still. I looked. And looked. And drove on. And found a TV stand. And am tired of garage sales. I was worn out. I made myself a little challenge to not buy anything new this month, except for food. And to stay out of stores. My kids hate shopping anyway, so they won't mind. We have each other, and we have our health. We can stick it out. And maybe I won't be so tired.