Fifty cents: Part two

Fifty cents: Part two

After 26 years of living in Australia there is still an intrinsic strand of stingy Dutchness left in me. My way of selling the left over landfill in our garage sale is to put prices of what I thought the item was worth. A stack of vinyl LPs and singles, worth fifty bucks right? WRONG! Julie’s flat rate for everything was just 50 cents. How much is this dress please? A customer would ask. ‘ 50 cents’ Julie replied with a sideways glance at me. Our customers immediately gravitated to Julie – funny that!

People came in droves. Word of the 50 cent shop spread like ticks on a roo. Many returned for a second and third helping. Our stock was picked clean like vultures around a fresh kill.



We had all sorts coming to our garage sale.



Very early in the morning a young Kiwi fly-in, fly-out worker came around and selected a few items. He stacked them up in a corner and asked how much it all was. I told him that it was about $20 dollars. He said that that was very cheap but that he had to go home and get the money to pay me. When he came back he gave us fifty dollars and refused to take the change.

One man came on his bike.  He was dressed up in orange and red lycra while the whole world was wishing he wasn’t. He bought some knick-knacks and revealed his best advice for the ‘Aussie’ traveler like us how to wash your clothes. He took a good half hour to explain how to wash clothes by hand in a small bottle. Excitedly he started making hand gestures while his jiggly bits bounced up and down “you just got to shake it” and it did. Other customers were rolling their eyes in the back of their heads. Good thing he came back ten minutes later with the actual bottle he uses and gave another jiggling demo.  He was a lovely man with such disarming helpfulness which may have been too much for some.

Just as we were about to pack up on our second garage sale we were suddenly blinded by a flash of sunlight on chrome. A sleek Mustang appeared as in a nostalgic time-warp back to “Happy Days” and canned laughter. A middle aged non-Fonzy lookalike hopped out with his daughter. No greasy comb job in sight. To my surprise Julie was clearly batting a few eyelids at the man with the car. “Ohh” Julie lovingly uttered. “Is this a 65 model. I was born in 1965”. In a suave voice the man said “Sorry Mam! It’s a 64….. and a half.” Would you like to take her for a drive, Mam? “Hah!!” I thought. Julie would never fall for that trick. “Oooh. Yes please.” She said. “You clean up the garage sale dear and I will be back soon”. She hopped in the driver’s seat and drove off leaving me to pick up my jaw off the ground. Many times after we have laughed about this. It turned out he was a Federal police man and bought lots of our junk.

The people we met during the three garage sales were very nice to us and definitely not a bunch of galahs. 

Many were interested in our semi grey nomad story. The whole thing was just a great experience and hey!? If 30 customers per day buy 20 items for a minimal of fifty cents it is worth doing. Even this stingy Dutchman has to admit that.

More semi grey nomad tips for a Garage sale.

·         Try and detach emotionally from the merchandise. Sometimes deep breathing is required.

·          If you can’t detach yourself find somewhere to store it.  Ask yourself how important all this
           stuff is to you when you are about to take off on the adventure of a lifetime.

·         Give it away. You will have to bin it anyway as you can't take it all. Be generous to others that
           may need it more than you.

·         To enable to get the most out of your stock start several months before you leave. This will
           reduce overall stress.

·         Move into your caravan way before hitting the road. This will enable you to test all the
          equipment, give you an indication what you need on the road and distance yourself from the
          house and those things in it.

·         You will find out during this process that you can live with very little. I have taken this as the
          biggest lesson out of this.

 

 

 

Fifty cents: Part one

Fifty Cents: Part one

They come out in the early morning before dawn. They scour the night landscape, they creep up your driveway quietly, carefully.They catch you unawares when you are still waking up – what big eyed nocturnal animal this is – you may wonder! Is it a quenda, a bilby or a tawny frog mouth – no! None of that. It is the garage sale fanatic otherwise known as the ‘treasuresorus rex.’

The actual garage.

Little did we know about the sub-culture that exists in cities like Perth of the bargain hunters. What a lovely crowd of people that just love a good deal.When you are set to downsize into a caravan I estimate that 90% of all your gear is surplus. Julie and I had a six-month rule in our household. If we don’t use something within six months it is gone, finished, vamoose. A good rule in theory but you would be surprised how much stuff gathers dust in places in your home you haven’t looked for in ages and how much work it takes to get it all out of your home. This is all about the 90% refuse. Selling our gear was such a rich mixture between pleasure and pain. There are those denim jackets, tennis bags full of rackets and many a tool unused. It is strange to feel the attachment to  running wild within your veins. At times when an older lady tried to walk away from the garage with a bag full of trinkets I felt like tackling her to the ground while yelling out loudly

“that snorkel is mine.”

One day while we were setting up for the garage sale I found Julie sobbing over a lacquered music box. She opened the music box and a ballerina appeared pirouetting in front of a little mirror. Through her tears Julie's crushed voice explained it was given to her by her Nanna when she was 11 years old. There is just no way that you can sell something like that.

The decision was made not to sell all the material excess that we had accumulated over the years and to keep the sentimental garbage.This strategy grew to six or seven packing boxes and most of our artwork that we are keeping with Julie’s parents. Gracefully they accepted to look after our leftovers.

Shift from this

 

And this

Three garage sales in total saw us shift our gear to other peoples homes, bins or their professional garage sales. We could have held three more and still wouldn’t have ‘flogged’ it all.

I must admit that two weeks after we stored those boxes I cannot for the life of me remember what’s in the boxes. And so, it may become a time capsule. Who knows what we may find when we reveal the secrets that lie in our time capsule a few years on. It will be proof of human’s obsessive, compulsive desire to hoard.

To this.

Tips for the semi-grey nomad

·         Set a time to indicate when you are open. We opened at 7am and finished about 12pm.

·         Place an eyecatching item in front of your house next to or on your garage sale sign eg:  
          balloons.

·         Advertise larger items like household furniture, white goods & special interest items on the
          Internet ie: e-bay  and/or Gumtree as you are likely to get a better price compared to selling
          these items at a garage sale.

In Western Australia good places to advertise garage sales are listed below:

·         Quokka

·         Saturday West Australian newspaper (they provided us with a garage sale pack including
          signage, tips for a successful garage sale and a tally sheet as a record of your sold items ).

·         Local newspaper.

·         Sunday Times.

·         Many of the above publications have an on-line classified section.

This is to the secret hidden nomad within you.

This is to the secret hidden nomad within you.

Are you ever so sick of your life you just want to scream??? Is your boss riding you so hard you have carpet burns on your knees??? Are you so bored with your surrounds you feel like you are being choked by Arnold Swarzennegger??? You have hung in there for years and still no promotion. To speak with that old rocker: You just cant get no... satisfaction? 

Remember those times when you were driving back from that holiday year in year out saying “wouldn't it be nice if I could just stay a few more days”?? Well! Why drive back?

Why not drive on into the sunset?

We are!!!!

Yes! We have sold our house. Yes! We have oh so  gently stuck that rude finger up to that boss. We have said a tearful goodbye to the kids and would have to the grand kids if I had any.  We have given farewell speeches at sports clubs and bingo halls.  Yeah!! We did buy a kick arse car and caravan and are going around Australia.

This is a stumbling and bumbling account of two semi-grey nomads who have had enough already. This is all free content and raw reporting. Ride all the highs and lows, the triumphs and disasters, accidents and achievements with us. We will show you how we went about breaking free.

This is the story of Marcel and Julie on a zigzag through Australia.