Deja vu! Yesterday morning early, my soon-to-be fiancee and I awoke early to partake in a old family ritual: Garage Sale-ing. The weekly Saturday sunrise activity is part thrift, part discovery, and part gamesmanship. For me, I realized yesterday, that it started young and shaped some of the way I do things today.
Today, the economy is rough and Garage Sales offer deals. We experienced that yesterday, as Chenlu and I filled our apartment with a couch, desk, wall hangings, and other small things for under $100 dollars. Our apartment feels much more like a home, and we enjoyed the experience of working together to find the second-hand treasures. Nothing to big about saving money for the coming year.
However, the discovery makes Garage Sale-ing so much fun. It is a treasure hunt, with a map and tools, but the treasures are unknown. For whatever reason, I like bargains. I love bargains. I have such a hard time paying full retail for anything, but do not hesitate to buy multiples of things on sale. Funny though, I do not care for second-hand stores, etc. I believe Garage Sale-ing is acceptable to me because I meet the previous owners of the goods. I get a chance to discover how they live, where they live, what other goods they are selling, and how they sell the goods they do no want anymore. It makes the purchase feel better. It is like taking a pet from an owner that has to move away. That is part of what makes the discovery of treasures so great for me, and satisfies my emotional desire to get a deal.
It is especially fun to work the deal. I found myself going back in time as a child or even 10 years ago and checking into deal maker's mode. If you find a good prospective seller with something you like, you immediately ask for a price on the item and once the price is given...you wait. Put the item down, subtly communicate that you are not happy with the initial price and begin to move around the merchandise. Check to see if there is anything else you might want from the sale, because you know that the initial price is either coming down or you are going to create a nice combination of things for that price. Lower prices or more merchandise is the game.
This, of course, was learned early on as our family went to garage sales and swap meets almost every weekend. The lessons of negotiation, patience, value sourcing, self sacrifice, working together as a team, and stepping back to analyze the situation are all vital elements to the art of Garage Sale-ing. As I finished up yesterday and unloaded our treasures, it struck me that I use those elements in my day-to-day work life.
I now realize that the greatest treasures of my childhood garage sale-ing days have materialized in the form of those valuable lessons, not the second-hand toys and games that ended up at our garage sales.
Today, the economy is rough and Garage Sales offer deals. We experienced that yesterday, as Chenlu and I filled our apartment with a couch, desk, wall hangings, and other small things for under $100 dollars. Our apartment feels much more like a home, and we enjoyed the experience of working together to find the second-hand treasures. Nothing to big about saving money for the coming year.
However, the discovery makes Garage Sale-ing so much fun. It is a treasure hunt, with a map and tools, but the treasures are unknown. For whatever reason, I like bargains. I love bargains. I have such a hard time paying full retail for anything, but do not hesitate to buy multiples of things on sale. Funny though, I do not care for second-hand stores, etc. I believe Garage Sale-ing is acceptable to me because I meet the previous owners of the goods. I get a chance to discover how they live, where they live, what other goods they are selling, and how they sell the goods they do no want anymore. It makes the purchase feel better. It is like taking a pet from an owner that has to move away. That is part of what makes the discovery of treasures so great for me, and satisfies my emotional desire to get a deal.
It is especially fun to work the deal. I found myself going back in time as a child or even 10 years ago and checking into deal maker's mode. If you find a good prospective seller with something you like, you immediately ask for a price on the item and once the price is given...you wait. Put the item down, subtly communicate that you are not happy with the initial price and begin to move around the merchandise. Check to see if there is anything else you might want from the sale, because you know that the initial price is either coming down or you are going to create a nice combination of things for that price. Lower prices or more merchandise is the game.
This, of course, was learned early on as our family went to garage sales and swap meets almost every weekend. The lessons of negotiation, patience, value sourcing, self sacrifice, working together as a team, and stepping back to analyze the situation are all vital elements to the art of Garage Sale-ing. As I finished up yesterday and unloaded our treasures, it struck me that I use those elements in my day-to-day work life.
I now realize that the greatest treasures of my childhood garage sale-ing days have materialized in the form of those valuable lessons, not the second-hand toys and games that ended up at our garage sales.
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