Garage Sales, or Making Yourself Feel Better about Getting Rid of Things

As I mentioned in my previous post, I have a hard time getting rid of things.  I am sentimental about everything, and I also suffer from that frequent female "I'll wear that again someday" delusion.  I also happen to have a ridiculous number of books, very few of which I want to get rid of.  All this tumbles up into overcrowding, lack of space, and the necessity of getting rid of things.

There are a lot of ways to get rid of things: giving them to friends or relatives (usually I'm on the receiving end of the relatives part, which explains why I have some old lady clothes in my goodbye pile); donating them to some sort of worthy cause, whether it be thrifting, a homeless shelter, whatever place seems acceptable; or outright throwing it in the trash.  However, I will be having a garage sale.

Google Images is pretty accurate.

I'll be the first to admit, I don't really even enjoy going to garage sales.  I never seem to find anything good, unlike most of my relatives.  I hate the inanity of people trying to quibble over fifty cents (I am not a haggler.  Just pay the price and be done with it).  And generally there's a fair amount of heat and sun involved, which is no good for a pasty person like myself.

Now, I'm just out of college and flat-broke, which explains most of my reasoning behind having a garage sale rather than donating all of my stuff.  But as I was preparing for the garage sale (I'm not going to lie, I'm still not done and I only have about two days to finish.  Whoops.), I realized a garage sale really has more to it.  A garage sale, and the act of a random stranger purchasing that which you no longer care for, validates your caring for it in the first place.  Someone else's desire for an item means it was okay to hang on to the item, because at some level, it has a value.  It's a lot easier to give something up if it means someone else wants it.  At the end of the day, that's all most of us really want, right?  Validation, appreciation, affirmation - it's an emotional human need, and it carries weight.

Even from a stranger at a fifty cent price tag.