I love a good yard sale and from an entertainment value standpoint, I love a bad yard sale. I have been going to yard sales for 30+ years. My formative years were spent being dragged screaming on Saturday morning to either a yard sale or the dreaded fabric store by my mother. I spent years going to thrift stores, but I now favor garage sales – with the added estate or church jumble sale tossed in. I love getting to go into people’s homes, unless they have recently died – that is always creepy, but can yield some great finds. Plus, I’m nosy and getting inside a person’s home for a sale is one of the few socially acceptable reasons to look around.

A few things to know about me; I don’t haggle (very often), I carry cash, I am not rude, and I seem to have an uncanny knack for finding really good shit. It’s said that the early bird gets the worm, but coming to someone’s sale an hour early makes you a complete jackass.

My dream is to take a vacation to The World’s Longest Yard Sale: The 127 Corridor Sale. 450 miles of yard sales covering a few states!

I am already thinking about the first of many sales this season, with what I would call the “spring opener” or what our neighborhood calls the Annual Phinney Neighborhood Sale. The Phinney sale usually has around 150 sales each year and it usually draws 2,000 shoppers. Tightly packed streets of double parked cars, women running down the street at some feeble attempt to “get the good stuff” – as if we would be looking for the same items! It’s almost too aggressive and has the added sting of more families moving into the area (aka less old crap and more new baby crap) but I seem to get something good (should I jinx myself and say great) enough to bring me back each year.