yardsale.jpgOne of the few benefits to living in our house is the huge amount of storage space.  I understand it is also one of the most dangerous things to have.  Much like a goldfish will grow to fit its bowl, some people have the habit of accumulating useless knick-knacks until every closet, crawlspace, basement, attic, and “spare” room are absolutely crammed until bursting with stuff they will never, ever use in a million years.

And, man, I mean freaking never. 

As a matter of fact a lot of the stuff people collect have no possible use other than to act as a great disservice to archeologists of the future.  Think about it. Wildly inaccurate claims will be made on the life and leisure of people of the 21st century based on the items that are found in your ex-house.  “It was considered a symbol of high status amongst these primitive peoples to gather and store as many irreparable gas-powered Weed Eater engines as they could, possibly for religious rituals…”

Fortunately, I have been cursed with a low tolerance for clutter and blessed with a like-minded wife. We recognize the difference between a memento worth saving and a shoebox full of broken cell phone chargers.  We don’t measure a room’s potential value by trying to imagine it packed to the rafters with cardboard boxes filled with broken exercise bicycle parts and half-used PAAS Easter Egg coloring kits that we will sort though “some day, we swear”.

I know, I know… You are thinking the geegaws that comprise your little hoard “might be collector’s items some day”.  I will let you in on a little secret: it’s 2008.  That means absolutely everything is a Limited One of a Kind Platinum Edition Director’s Cut in the Special Metal Box with the Shiny Foil Trading Cards and Cheat Codes Inside.  Everything is amazing, everything is garbage, everything is useful and necessary, and everything is just taking up space.  Everything, in short, is the Tom Waits’ song ‘Step Right Up’. 

(Steps gingerly down from soap box. Looks around. Blushes) But we have been slipping lately.  Over the past decade we have accumulated enough worthless stuff to mandate having a yard sale.  Actually, that’s not true.  We have about half of what is needed so we are sharing happy-fun-time-crap-fest with some friends of ours this Saturday.  They live in a more populated area and I don’t think even the most ardent connoisseurs of other-people’s-very-used-stuff will drive 30 miles to paw through our collection of maybe-all-there jigsaw puzzles. 

(Places one foot tentatively back on soap box) Or maybe they would.  But be ye warned: Oh, I will take your money as you successfully haggle a functional TI-85 calculator with no battery cover out from under me for $3 instead of the suggested $3.50.  But know that I would have been just as happy with $2.00, $1.00, or even 50 cents just to get the dust-collecting thing out of my dang house.  And, when you leave with your treasure, I will mock you for it relentlessly, trash-boy.

Weather permitting, of course.