Garage sales: It’s the little things

The pitfalls of too much stuff.

Story and photo by Gordon Berg

How on earth did we collect so much stuff in our homes?! Yes, we are a consumer society. Our very economy is based on it. But, really??

And, if you’re in the latter part of your life, how are your grown children even going to find the time to sift through it all when you’re gone? Their own lives are so hectic that quickly dispensing with all but a few treasures is the best they can do.

I blame our current predicament on us Baby Boomers. Our parents raised us in tiny, practical, post-war bungalows. In the ’50s and ’60s, we kids needed stuff. Bikes, hula hoops, croquet sets, badminton sets, lawn darts and more bikes to replace the ones we outgrew. Where did all that stuff end up? In the basement. Then, as we became teenagers, we needed bigger stuff. Dirt bikes, camping gear, maybe even a surfboard. Where did all that go? The garage. After 25 years and multiple kids later, our homes looked like some mad scientist’s experiment gone bad, with stuff oozing out of our garages and onto our lawns and driveways. Our stuff was taking over.

Under these circumstances, there is only one thing to do. Have a garage sale!

Yup. According to Encyclopedia.com, we Americans host an estimated 6.5- to 9-million garage sales each year.

And, according to a survey reported on YardSaleSearch.com, the vast majority of garage sales generate less than $300. Looking at it another way, if you put 48 hours into finding, organizing and selling your stuff, you’ve just made a whopping $6.25 for your trouble. You’d be better off flippin’ burgers at a fast-food restaurant.

But, undaunted by the data, I began my garage-sale gathering a few years ago by starting in the logical place — the garage. The random assortment of stuff piled up there was like looking at geologic layers of memories and detritus.

It was a beautiful summer day for garage-sale prep. An oldies station was pumping out surfing tunes. Our son was away at a music festival. My wife was mowing the lawn in front of our home.

Leaning on my organizational skills, I set up a triage on the driveway for it all. One pile of stuff to keep. Another to be sold. Still another to pitch. It was slow going at first, but I found that the more I put in the “pitch” or “sell” piles, the easier it got. Even better, I discovered things I hadn’t seen in years.

After a few hours, my eyes fell on one such item in the deep recesses of the garage … our son’s old skateboard. It called to me. I remembered the skateboard my brother and I made using a board and a pair of old roller skates. We shredded many a hill back in the ’60s. How hard could it be now? Gotta be like riding a bike … right?

I positioned it in the middle of the driveway behind the house. I could hear the lawn mower out front. I was alone. No one was watching. I placed my left foot on the board and gently shoved off with my right. It moved. I rode it. “Hey,” I thought to myself. “You’ve still got it!” The second push with my right foot had more confidence. Some real hutzpah.

Before performing any unwise feat, it’s important to remember the irrefutable laws of physics. With each action there is an equal and opposite reaction. The board flew forward, and I fell backward. Instinctively, I held out both hands to catch my fall. (Gravity played a role here, too.)

There is a moment during such occasions that feels like slow motion. You wish you could undo the goofy thing you just did. You know it won’t end well. Then an instant later you hear a snap … inside your body. I heard two.

“S**tf**kd**n!” (My favorite run-on expletive I mutter under such circumstances.)

I went inside, still hearing my wife’s lawn mower out front, climbed upstairs and laid down on the bedroom floor.

As I assessed the damage, I realized I couldn’t hear the lawnmower anymore.

“Gord. Gord?!” My wife called up from the bottom of the stairs. “What’s going on? Are you okay?”

I still laid there, hovering between the grown up I was and the child I felt like. I weakly replied, “I think I hurt myself. We may need to go to the E.R.”

Somehow the doctor kept a straight face as I recounted what happened. A couple X-rays confirmed that I had indeed fractured both wrists in exactly the same places, and my elbow had a hairline fracture as well.

I emerged from the examining area and found my wife among all the other parents in the lobby whose kids had suffered similar humiliations. The only difference being that they were actual kids.

“I called our son to let him know that you were being treated for a skateboard injury,” she said.

“What did he say?” I asked, eager for some sympathy.

She paused, looked at me and smiled. “He said, ‘Awesome!’”

A few days later he and his girlfriend came by to present me with a get-well gift. “How very thoughtful,” I said, curiously watching the grins they were trying to suppress. This, I knew, was not going to be a box of flowers.

No. It was a Tony Hawk action figure — the most famous skateboarder in the world.

Yup. I definitely had that comin’ to me.

So be bold, folks! Fearlessly dive into those garages, those basements, those storage lockers. Get rid of all that stuff you’ll never need again. But as you sift through it all, find and keep the little things. My son’s skateboard is long gone. But that action figure? Oh, it’s a cherished memory that’ll never end up in a garage sale.

Gordon Berg is a descendant of Manistee’s Bergs, Swansons and Martinsons. His debut book, “Harry and the Hurricane,” is about his father’s life as a young boy and how he survived the Miami Hurricane of 1926. harryandthehurricane.com

Read more by Gordon Berg HERE.