Yard-sale haul 2021

After being called off in 2020 on account of the pandemic, the annual Highland Park town-wide yard sale returned this year in all its glory. The planners even added a new twist: this year, people who for some reason couldn't host sales on their own property had the option of booking a space in the big downtown parking lot where our Friday farmers' market takes place in the summer. So Brian and I knew as we planned our weekend excursions that we could count on finding a good cluster of sales in one spot there.

Although we weren't hunting for any large items at this year's sales, there were a few smaller items I was on the lookout for. One was shoes of all kinds, since I currently have multiple pairs in my closet that are either due or seriously overdue for replacement (and as regular readers will know, finding shoes is always a struggle for me). And although I knew it was a long shot, I hoped I might chance on a copy of The Weekend Garden Guide for a friend who has recently acquired his first house and is planning to plant his first garden. Other than that, we were just keeping our eyes peeled for anything that looked like a good bargain, either for ourselves or as a holiday gift for anyone on our list.

And on this score, I'd say we did pretty well. On Saturday, we started out on the north side, working our way up one avenue and down another before crossing town to visit the market area and the cluster of sales that show up every year along Felton Avenue. We were out for about three hours all told and came home with the haul you see here:

• Two shirts for me. One is a practical plaid that can be worn as a layering piece; the other is a more fanciful lacy blouse that can be incorporated into period costumes.
• 
  One pair of hiking boots in a boys' size 5 1/2. That's actually a little big for me, but they're wearable and intact, and that's more than I can say for any of the three other pairs of winter boots I currently have at home. These can definitely take the place of my old Timberland hiking boots, which I was keeping around at this point solely for grubby outdoor jobs. And if I can't find a more appropriate pair of winter boots by December, they may end up becoming my everyday shoes this winter.
• Four books. One of them, a Ngaio Marsh mystery, is for our own enjoyment. The other three are fantasy novels we have already read and plan to present to one or more of our niblings.
• Two board games. Some of the sellers in the market area turned out to be not homeowners getting rid of stuff, but vendors who are normally there on Fridays. One of these stalls belonged to The Moonladies, two sisters who used to run a local gift and toy store. After losing their premises last year, they've been making do with a booth in the market, and they had taken advantage of yard-sale weekend to unload some clearance merchandise. The prices were much higher than you'd normally expect to pay at a yard sale, but still well below retail. Brian picked up one board game there, which we won't name since it's likely to be a gift for someone who reads this blog. We also found another small game — suitable for a stocking stuffer, perhaps — on a table full of items marked "free."
• Two bottles of masala sauce from the Moonladies booth. We usually make sauces from scratch, but Brian calculated that the marked-down price was approximately what we'd pay for the ingredients for a similar sauce. And anyway, it was a way to support a local business.
• A fold-up camping chair (the big blue thing in the background). We already had one of these that had come in handy at various outdoor events, and picking up this one gives us a matched pair.
  
• A bracelet (not visible in photo) that will make a nice gift for a niece.
• An alarm clock. This was another freebie. Brian grabbed it even though it was held together with a rubber band because he already had an identical clock that was broken, and he thought he might be able to scavenge the parts from it to repair the old one.
• A replacement seat for Brian's bike. He nearly didn't buy this, arguing that he didn't really need it because the one he has now isn't falling apart that fast. But eventually he saw the logic of securing a replacement now for $3, rather than having to buy a brand-new one when this one finally gives up the ghost.
  

By the time we'd collected all this, we were feeling pretty footsore, so we decided not to go out again after lunch. Instead we spent the afternoon running errands at actual stores, picking up food for ourselves and the kitties.

Sunday morning we ventured out again, heading up to the far north edge of the town to take in a different set of sales. As usual, the sales weren't nearly as thick on the ground on Sunday as they had been on Saturday. Some sellers who had signed up for both days had packed it in after Saturday, and even some who had signed up for Sunday only apparently decided not to bother setting up shop at all. So after about two and a half hours, we came home with only three items:

• A bag full of apples. We didn't buy these, but scavenged them near the home of a neighbor with several large apple trees. The trees had been picked clean to about the height that could be reached with a standard ladder, but a lot of the fruit on the higher branches had fallen off onto the ground and had been left to rot. Most of the apples were too damaged to eat, but we gleaned enough intact ones to fill up one of our reusable produce bags. And, as we discovered later when we cut one up to eat with our lunch, they're very good apples. (Maybe next year we can work out a deal with this neighbor to swap some of them for some of our plums.)
  
  
• A board game called "Fog of Love," which looked amusing enough to risk a dollar on.
• A book called Debt: The First 5,000 Years, by David Graeber. Books about money are an interest of mine, and I read enough of this one to confirm that it looked both interesting and intelligible to an ordinary reader.
  
• Yet another alarm clock identical to the one we got on Saturday, except that this one was clearly in working condition. Brian felt a bit silly picking up the same clock again, but it was exactly what he wanted and it was only a dollar, so he decided it would be even more silly to pass it over.
  

The total amount we spent across both days of sales was $53.87, with most of that going to the Moonladies. It's more than we usually spend at these sales, but it enabled us to check at least three people off our holiday gift list, as well as providing several handy and/or amusing items for our own use. And since at least one of those items (the boots) was something that I absolutely needed, and that probably would have cost at least $53.87 to buy new, I consider everything else we bagged over the course of the weekend to be pure gravy.