There are risks associated with small town garage sales, where everyone knows you and is quite possibly familiar with some of your junk as well.
Gladys from down the street, who gave you those cloying scented soaps, might be offended to see those same soaps in your sale, especially with a paltry price tag.
What if Uncle George, who goes to every sale in town, sees that you’re unloading his Christmas gift to you, that latest gadget flogged by the Canadian Tire couple for the entire months of November and December?
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And do you really want the minister and most of town council to know about your penchant for bodice rippers?
Indeed, there are few secrets in small towns, so the ones people do manage to keep are closely guarded. To the rescue comes the multi-family garage sale, where everyone brings their junk to a central location, thereby obscuring its origins.
It’s all there: the plethora of wicker baskets and the cheap vases you get when someone sends flowers. Promotional coffee mugs. Mismatched drinking glasses. Toaster ovens. Used window blinds. Experienced golf balls. Unidentifiable electrical parts. Mason jars full of nails.
A few old paintings sit around, brought by owners who sincerely hope they don’t see these same paintings again, featured as amazingly valuable artistic finds on Antiques Roadshow.
Two kinds of books rule sales: romances and used textbooks. All are dogeared.
There’s always a lamp graveyard. What is it about the ability of old lamps to manifest the horrible decorating taste of your friends and neighbours?
Generational changes are on display in the form of used toys. The skates outgrown and the bicycles rusty from disuse hint at the march of time, but the purchasers bring evidence of renewal.
Thighmasters, stationary bicycles and cheap cross-country ski simulators squat among other torture devices. Does their appearance represent a fitness goal achieved or the forfeit of good intentions? The multi-family garage sale prevents any knowing glances relating to the latter.
Early birds at the sale find the sellers sticking close to their sticker price. Late-in-the-day shoppers find those same sellers eager to deal, now that they’re facing the prospect of hauling junk home again.
Everyone brings their junk to the sale along with a firm resolve to downsize and organize that garage or basement where the junk was recently residing. But inevitably they find that some of the neighbour’s junk is exactly what they’ve been looking for.
And so the seeds are sown for the next garage sale.
