The thing I’ve always loved about living in Somerville — and about hosting yard sales — is how unassuming people are, chatting with random strangers, making an effort to meet their neighbors and connect with their community through the things we share in common.
Now that our moving sale is just two days away, I’m remembering firsthand that one of the most stressful things about hosting a garage sale or yard sale — other than the weather forecast — is promoting your sale and making sure that people actually show up.
The weather is slowly, finally, maybe inching toward Spring and that has me dreaming of one thing — one beautiful thing known by many names.
Garage sale. Tag sale. Stoop sale. Yard sale. Sidewalk sale. Call it whatever you want, it’s a dreamy Saturday adventure to me.
We thrift. And DIY. And scavenge. And upcycle. And swap. A lot. Over the course of the past 5 years of running this magazine, we’ve accumulated a lot of cool stuff, and have toyed on and off with opening an online store (or a brick and mortar store-slash-event-space).
Even though our dear Minimalist Mama Christine Koh is on maternity leave — Welcome to the world, little Violet!
The buds are on the trees, and the bats are swinging at Fenway park, which to me always signals something very exciting:
It’s yard sale season.
If you live in a neighborhood, you know it’s true: summer is yard sale season, and now that it’s getting hotter, undoubtedly you’ve seen home-made signs for sales cropping up on telephone poles all over.
For most of us, a semi-regular yard sale is merely an excuse to clean out the closets, perhaps lighten the load a bit before we move to our next house or apartment. The few bucks we pocket from these sales might fund the next housewarming party, but rarely would we look at them as a future career opportunity.
Unless, that is, you think like Aaron LaPedis.
In 1997, Chris Heiska moved to a part of Maryland where, “the nearest shopping mall was an hour away.” Refusing to let distance derail her shopping habits, Heiska became a yard sale devotee, going so far as to adopt the online moniker of Yard Sale Queen.
Check out these tips for curbing clutter by the organizational masterminds behind GetButtonedUp.com, from root causes and symptoms to techniques for letting go of all that stuff.