The Great Free Yard Sale Experiment

Eighteen years in the same house is a long time. A long time to accumulate a lot of crap.

But as long as it hid down in the basement as part of our rare brown recluse habitat, we felt like it was at least contributing to the ecology. But no more.

After years of promising ourselves that we’d do it, we finally rented a construction dumpster from Home Depot and cleared 30 cubic yards of stuff out of our lives. We tried to be fearless about it; I only went to the bottom of the dumpster once to rescue an old notebook from the first history classes I taught when I worked at a prep school. It’ll probably go out in the next trash run anyway.

But how does this involve you, dear reader? Despite the fact that we got rid of this much junk, there was still quite a lot of stuff that we were more than willing to part with, but that was still too nice to throw away. We’re not the yard sale type of homeowners, though. See that back 20% of the dumpster? That reserved for whatever our friends don’t want to take off our hands. For free!

We don’t care what you do with it. Don’t tell us it’s valuable if it turns out to be. Don’t offer us any money for it. Go ahead and have your own yard sale of you want and make a small bundle of money. We’d be happy for you. But come next Saturday at 4:00, anything left is going in the back of the dumpster for a Monday pick-up.

If you see anything you like, just send an email to thedryspot@gmail.com and I’ll put it aside for you on a first come-first served basis. We’ll have a box of wine and a case of beer available for your pleasure while we schedule the hand-off of our crap (er…treasures) on Friday August 1 from 5:30-7:30 and Saturday August 2 from 9:00-3:00. We’ll probably post something on Craigslist later in the week after our SimNashville friends get first crack at everything.

So what sort of stuff have we got? Take a look-see.

Here’s two Razor type scooters and an electric foot scooter. The charger works, but last time I remember, the scooter blew fuses. Maybe a techie type might like an easy project. Otherwise, it’s dumpster-bound.

This big inflatable rum bottle just appeared on our front porch years ago from sources unknown. If nobody wants it, we might make a nocturnal delivery to somebody else’s porch. Maybe yours.

Here’s a never used hanging wardrobe that was supposed to hold my hunting clothes that have been stored in the basement. I ended up figuring that mold was green and just contributed to the camouflage pattern anyway so I never used it. There’s also a couple of life preservers and a boat cushion that I kept long after I sold my boat. Go figure.

Here’s about 2 1/2 sets of old golf clubs. Totally usable, but not exactly the latest technology. This probably fits into the “Wow, these old persimmon woods are really valuable and you shouldn’t be giving them away” but I don’t give a crap category. I also have at least 100 brand new golf balls that would be great practice balls for somebody to hit with their new old clubs.

For your outdoor cooking pleasure, I have a full turkey frying kit with tons of extra accessories and smoker attachments. I fried turkeys for five consecutive Thanksgivings and then decided that I wanted to live to see my fifties, so I stopped using it. We also have a bunch of old soft coolers and playmates to make your picnic complete.

Speaking of Playmates, I’ve been unwilling to get rid of the couple hundred old Playboys that I subscribed to in the Dark Ages before I was in a committed relationship. But I think I’m ready and I’m sure there’s somebody out there with a fourteen year old kid with an appreciation for the female form. A friend gave me his father’s collection after he died, so there’s probably some duplicate issues and maybe a Penthouse or two thrown in there. I can’t vouch for the inherited rags, but I can tell you that most of mine are lightly used. I think there’s also a decade or two of SI swimsuit issues in those boxes too. No cherry-picking. If you take one, you take them all.

On the geekier side, I think I have most of the first 75 issues of Dragon Magazine. (Shut up!) I know these used to be really valuable amongst the RPG set, but I don’t want to deal with the hassle of selling them, or meeting the folks who would want to buy them.

This is a box of miscellaneous camping gear. I’ve reached the age where I don’t like to sleep on the ground anymore. I like to have something underneath me when I sleep. Like four floors of a Marriott. Come and get it!

Finally I have several copies of a great coffee table book that was basically one of those “A Day in the Life of…” books, but specifically about Music City. It was written by a good friend of mine and printed on my paper, so that’s why I bought a crapload of them to give away. They’re still in the original shrink wrap and would look great in your living room. Or your basement.

Can you tell I don’t care anymore?