I am a huge sucker for having a Garage Sale. I love them. My husband? Er-uh, not so much. I understand why though. It starts when I pass by a retired piece of furniture sitting in the garage and say, “We should sell that – we need to have a garage sale this weekend.” He then reminds me that you don’t have a “Garage Sale” for one item. I agree. So that puts me on a mission like a bat out of hell to find other things we could sell.
The kids dig through their closets and bring down all kinds of quality toys like nekked barbie dolls, stuffed animals that look like they just had twenty year old dreadlocks removed and costumes with ripped hemlines. Meanwhile I’m ripping things off the wall and digging through closets to find anything we might put a price tag on because I must justify this Garage Sale or else we might not ever get to have another one!
I wasn’t expecting much with this Garage Sale because a sign didn’t go in the yard until Friday night after dinner. But no worries because who needs advertisement when your first grader tells her entire class about her family’s Garage Sale. I had four phone calls/text messages from parents and Grandparents asking what time the Garage Sale started. Ha! Too funny. So we got to see some of Sophie’s friends today and that was fun.
Sophie was very excited about the lemonade stand and sweet shop. Here’s the lemonade stand and sweet shop. All one shelf. Be amazed because this thing raked in more sales than any other one ticketed item all day. Ha!!! Seriously.
They didn’t figure out the secret until half way through so I’m convinced they could’ve made even more money selling .25 lemonade and .50 brownies. At first the set up was closer to the house instead of the street. So people had to get out of their cars to purchase lemonade and then look at the junk-yard sale stuff. But when we moved the stand closer to the street they hit the jack pot.
Many Moms stopped by and said to me, “I remember when my girls did lemonade stands and so I want to support you guys.” Another Mom said, “My daughter is 24 and I promised myself when she was young that if I ever passed by a lemonade stand I would always buy lemonade.” Most people gave the girls a $1.00 for the lemonade but here’s the best of them all……this was classic you guys……
a huge Monster Truck came by and got in line!
Oh yes, they had a line going. Okay, it was two cars but still that’s a line when you’re a six year old small business owner. The girls could hardly hear their order because the truck was so loud. The passenger reached down and handed Sophie $4.00 and said, “Keep the tip.” They drove off and the girls just screamed with excitement. I told them to run inside and tell Randy they just sold a $4 cup of lemonade. He was suddenly becoming a junk-yard sale believer now.
I told the girls that if they sold 5 cups of lemonade in thirty minutes they could go pick out a toy for FREE! The irony. Sophie’s toys that came out of her room less than 24 hours earlier were now looked upon with a whole new perspective. I didn’t realize how quickly they’d meet their quota. So we did this a few times. It’s shocking isn’t it? That there was any merchandize left for the girls to pick from with the whopping few junk-yard sale customers we had!
At one point the girls were waving pom-poms and yelling, “We want customers!!!!” I advised them to maybe sound more inviting? and their response was, “Well that doesn’t work. Cars just wave at us and they don’t stop.” We had to change it up. Well alrighty then.
At the end of the day this junk-yard sale and lemonade stand brought in $76.00! Whoo-hoo! We are saving up for a family outreach project we do every Christmas and this will be a great contribution towards it. Seriously thinking about letting her do another lemonade stand because it was such a hit today.
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