What a busy month November turned out to be!
We left the St. Louis area on Wednesday, 11/4 and headed west to Moore, Oklahoma. It was a little too far to drive in one day so we found a casino parking lot to stay overnight. We got off I-40 at exit 1 in Missouri, drove one mile north and parked our rig. The parking lot was in Kansas but the casino, a short walk across the parking lot, was in Oklahoma - weird. Casino's often offer rv parking with hook-ups, this one was especially nice because when we went in to register for the night we also signed up for their casino card which entitled us each to one free night at the rv park - such a deal! They also gave us a two for one buffet coupon! They must have expected to make their money back on our losses but we fooled them - we won!! That was a nice way to start our Oklahoma adventure.
We left the casino the next morning and arrived at the Cleveland County Fairground in Norman, Oklahoma in the early afternoon. We found this campground thru friends we worked with in Arizona last winter (thanks Brenda!). It's no frills but all we needed was a place to park the rig, we spent most of our time working at the house in Moore.
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| Our first sale from someone just driving by |
Joe and Roseanne drove down from Chicago to meet us at "the house" Friday morning (11/6). Roseanne's stepmother, Linda, passed away in September and we're here to help with clearing out the house and set up for a garage/estate sale. To say that Linda was a shopaholic is putting it mildly - why buy one of something when you can get get a dozen? Does anybody really need over 200 Mumu's? Every room was filled and the furniture was too large for the space. This turned out to be a bigger project than we imagined. We all started working, sorting things into donate, sell, or keep piles. We also tried to sort like items together. One room was designated as the "doll" room (there were close to 200 of them). Another room was the "Christmas" room. There were so many stuffed animals that we just started using the larger bathroom to throw them in to deal with later.
The weather was great so we were able to put stuff outside and we often
had people stop by and ask if something was for sale - yes! Absolutely!
Please buy it and come on in the house and see if there is anything
else you need. Oh, and make sure you come to our garage sale on Black Friday!
Joe and Roseanne left on Sunday, 11/8 and the plan was for them to come back the day before Thanksgiving for the garage sale on Black Friday and Saturday. That gave us almost three weeks to get everything sorted - yikes! Marty also put many, many items on Craig's List which was a huge help in getting rid of some of the big furniture.
The best thing that happened while we were working was the day a car pulled up and asked if we were selling the file cabinet that was out on the lawn. As we were talking we mentioned all the dolls we had, enough for a whole room. The woman said she likes dolls so I brought her into the house to show here what we had. She offered to help set up the doll room and worked three days doing it!! She even brought her two teenage girls to help. Thanks Melinda!! The doll room was the room I was dreading and I didn't have to do anything, Melinda and her girls took care of it all - what a lucky day it was when they stopped by.
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| Dolls outside room waiting to be organized |
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| More Dolls in room waiting to be set-up |
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| All set up and ready for buyers! |
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| Thankgiving Dinner Break at Western Sizzlin |
We worked hard getting ready for our Black Friday garage sale, it was really hard for just the two of us and we were very happy when Joe, Roseanne and Lil came back down on Wednesday (11/25) to help get it set up and everything priced. We all worked so hard on Wednesday and even on Thanksgiving (with just a quick trip to a local buffet for our Turkey dinner) and
were ready on Friday for our shoppers. Even though there was an
ICE-STORM people still came out in droves. Shoppers came, saw how good our prices were and called their friends. There were people who came 2 or 3 times each day. We even had people come back after the sale on Sunday wanting to buy stuff. One lady even came back on Tuesday when she saw the garage door open. She bought more out of the garage but I blocked the door into the house - enough is enough!
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| Yes, that's ice on those branches! Ice in November in Oklahoma during our garage sale! |
Garage sales are a lot of work to set up but sale days are always fun. You meet lots of nice people and the days goes fast. And, if you're lucky, you even make some money. We sold lots and lots of things, everyone got incredible deals but unfortunately we still had so much to get rid of. Luckily we met some people who gave us great ideas on donating what was left.
Here are some photos of some of the items we had for sale:
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| The "Christmas" room |
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| So much kitchen stuff we ran out of counter space |
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| 186 mumu's! (we sold 21) |
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| My favorite item - a shoe phone (I kept it, I just had to) |
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| Red hats, beach hats, St. Patrick hats, winter hats. . . . |
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| Someone actually bought the yellow one (for her sister!) |
Once our sale was over it was time to clear out the house and donate what didn't sell. We managed to sell all the furniture but still had so much to get rid of. Luckily, we met a woman who told us about the City Rescue Mission, a 650 bed shelter in Oklahoma City. She used to work there and said the women there would love the mumu's to sleep in. We ended up making three trips there - they got all the mumu's and other clothes and shoes. They also got a lot of bedding and SIX construction size bags of new and like-new stuffed animals. I'm sure the kids there will be very happy!
During the garage sale another woman told us about an organization that collects purses for homeless women and fills them with personal products to distribute. Unfortunately, I didn't write down the name of the group. After much googling (is that a word?) I found a group on Facebook and contacted them. They were very happy to pick up our four large boxes of purses.
Even after donating all of the above we still had a garage full to get rid of. Luckily for us Habitat for Humanity would take all the household knick-knacks and kitchen items. They picked up over 60 boxes and cleared out the garage - YAY!
Everything else went to Goodwill and our work in Moore, OK was done!! We worked 30 days in a row and it was time for some sightseeing. We spent our last day in Oklahoma in the city visiting the Oklahoma Memorial site and museum - not fun but important especially with what's going on in the U.S. right now. It's very sobering to see all the chairs laid out on the lawn representing the people that were killed, especially the small chairs for the 16 day care kids ranging in age from 9 months to 5 years. How sad! It's nauseating that American terrorists could do such a horrible thing. It's even more disturbing that there is still so much hate and distrust in this country.
We left Oklahoma on Monday, 12/7 and made our way to Summerdale, Alabama (near Mobile) We'll be here for a month and hope to do lots of exploring in the area (and relaxing)!
