The Meaning of Discarded Treasures

We had a garage sale this past Saturday and I'm happy to say we netted about $450 for a day's work. We have one every couple of years when there's too much stuff and not enough room. I'm sure as my kids get older the frequency will diminish, right now my kids are still young enough where we're trading up (crib for twin bed, big dresser giving way to smaller dresser plus desk, etc.), and my house is overrun with the small things of infancy and we're almost through toddlerhood at this point, so from time to time the expulsion of all these once needed necessitiies is paramount to ramaining sane. David had 343 remote control objects of various sizes and shapes, how many can a single person control with just one pair of hands? (David's original answer -- 343. His revised answer after my anger started fogging up his glasses from three feet away -- 342). Mackenzie had so many young child toys, stuff she got on her own merits plus some of the good ones I saved from David little kid days, they were everywhere. I had kitchen paraphernalia I don't have a chance to use anymore, Keith had a bunch of really nice polo style shirts with lots of big names on them, but since we've been working out his shoulders and arms don't fit in them anymore, plus other stuff that was once vital and alive, but now gathers dust waiting to be used again.

The decision to discard one's own stuff can be either heartbreaking or made without a second thought. Some of the kid's stuff was easy to put in the discard pile. Some brought back memories of a child's face, lit up like Las Vegas, and for just a minute, you think if you hang on to the item, you'll hang onto the look on that child's face, maybe you can bring back a better time, a happier time, an easier time, you choose the adjective. Coming to the realization that it's just stuff, and the past is just memories can be hard to deal with. Then you have to price the stuff, and it's agony again as you try to put a value on your memories, or worse, a value on your taste. Five dollars for that! I paid thirty dollars seven years ago when it was new and before everybody and their brother had one! I told David that whatever he contributed to the garage sale would be his money if it sold, but if I pulled items from his room and I sold them, the money would be mine. Even my nine year old suffered from the stress of his decision making, I could hear him rationalizing about the train he got for Christmas that year, or how that car was his favorite gift from his dinosaur themed birthday party. In the end, he did contribute about a dozen items, in a range of sizes and shapes and ultimately made $16.

I'm not much of a garage sale shopper myself. There's a time constraint involved, plus the fact that I can't do much shopping with a nine and three year old around, it puts the damper on shopping of any kind. When I lived in Southern California, a garage sale might net a great Disney find, or a piece of transferware to add to my collection. Here in Idaho, the chances of that Disney find are more rare, and while I might be able to find something of value worth my time, it's not high on my list right now. I wanted to sell my stuff Saturday morning, but it was a great way to watch people for awhile. Watch and see what they were looking for, watch them and see them criticize my stuff, and then of all the injustices, watch them as they turned their nose up at my valuable stuff. What do they seek among my discarded memories? I watch them and wonder -- what are they looking for? Are they trying to replace something they once had? Are they looking for a more inexpensive version of something? Having been on the extremely tight and fixed budget at one point in my life, I can certainly understand shopping with quarters and dimes, but was still taken aback when I actually saw my former self buying a small toy for a child. A two dollar toy with one dollar being scraped out of the ashtray holder in her car. I used to do the same thing for french fries for my child, and often couldn't scrape the lousy 99 cents together. And it wasn't that my child needed french fries everyday, but I wanted to be able to provide them. I took her money and put the toy in a bag for her, and as she was leaving I offered a couple of cookies to her child, who eagerly shot out a hand. They were cookies that I was selling, a quarter a piece. As she went to stop her child (she had seen the sign), I told her if it was OK with her, it was OK with me, it's hard to say no to a child and I had been giving them away to kids all morning long. Maybe it was just wishful thinking on my part, but I think she understood I had been there once, too, and let her child take the cookies. My husband said he thought I was going to just give her the toy. I told him that I wouldn't haven't robbed her pride from her for anything. To me it was a two dollar toy, but that child needed to see his Mom buy that toy and hand it to him, and she needed to buy it and give it to him. He was so happy in the back seat of his car, clutching his new toy and wiping cookie crumbs from his face.

A simple reminder that one person's trash is another's treasure. That toy brought my daughter joy and I'm glad to see it continues to do it's job elsewhere.