MARK MY WORD: GARAGE SALE: WHERE 'GOOD JUNK' IS HIGH PRAISE

Saturday was a long day.

Joni and I got up at the crack of dawn and readied ourselves for a horde of eager shoppers.

It didn't take long for them to arrive and turn our quiet street into a virtual supermarket parking lot.

For the veteran shoppers, it was just another Saturday on the garage sale circuit.

We weren't the only family in our neighborhood that decided to sell their wares. Two other families on our street also held morning garage sales, adding to the shopping excitement.

I put up signs at key intersections announcing our garage sale. But many shoppers had seen our garage-sale ad in the paper, along with countless others. Looking for bargains, many of them had already turned onto our street before I posted the signs around 6 a.m.

Garage sales are a peculiarly American institution. In this country, even cities sell some of their tax-funded junk from time to time.

Some people view garage sales as a constitutional right that's every bit as important as the right to bear arms.

In this case, people have the right to buy anything they can carry and haul away. That includes everything from books to bed frames.

At our home, we can't find the will power or energy for more than one garage sale a year at best.

Getting ready for a garage sale is hard work. It's also messy. It requires you to haul everything out of your closets, the attic and anywhere else you may have stashed stuff.

Most people don't realize how much junk they have until they start planning for a garage sale. It's frightening what we can collect in a single year.

Much of what we had to sell were toys, children's clothes and Beanie Babies. We also had tons of friends' stuff to sell, as well as stuff from relatives.

Garage-less friends and relatives find our two-car garage an attractive place for a fire sale.

They say one man's junk is another man's treasure. It's just getting the stuff hauled out to the garage that gives one pause.

That, and pricing the stuff. If you have to use a calculator, you priced it too high.

There's also the chore of hauling away or storing what items didn't sell. At some point, you want to return to using your garage as a garage rather than a storage room.

As far as I know, we didn't sell anything that will show up later as a valued treasure on the "Antique Road Show."

Of course, no matter how many garage sales we have, we never seem to run out of junk.

People said we had good junk. That's always something to strive for in life. No red-blooded American wants to have bad junk.

Even our kids seemed to enjoy the prospect of cashing in on the sale of their no-longer-interested-in-using toys. Becca sold a bunch of her Beanie Babies.

Bailey didn't mind selling a few things either. However, she lamented the sale of her battery-powered Barbie jeep. But she got over it when she realized that she would get to spend some of the profits at a local toy store.

By Saturday afternoon, both of our daughters had spent some of their money from the garage sale. Joni and I are still contemplating what we want to buy.

Personally, I think we need a three-car garage. That way we would have more showroom space for future garage sales.

There are some people I know who have never had a garage sale. Joni and I marvel at that fact.

We can't imagine how they do it. We had garage sales even before we had children and the resulting clothes and toys that provide ammunition for such sales. How else were we going to tidy up the place?

Of course, you can't get rid of everything. You have to keep your kids and a few power tools.

Mark Bliss is a staff writer for the Southeast Missourian.