I hate garage sales.

I hate not knowing what exactly is at a garage sale. I hate having to rifle through stuff and a lot of it is pure junk. I hate having the feel of competition against the other people going to garage sales. I hate that they start so early in the morning. I hate the fact that some people think they are going to make big money from their garage sale and sell stuff WAY overpriced. I hate carrying cash. I hate the fact that they have "free" boxes of kid toys. I hate the pull to buy toys. I hate that people sell broken toys that you don't take the time to figure out if they are broken before you buy them. I hate the stress the whole situation brings me. I hate having to unload and reload the 4 of us in and out which takes 5 minutes (exaggerated) while it only takes me 30 seconds (unexaggerated) to see if a garage sale is a good one or not.

I love garage sales.

I love city wide garage sales. I love the fact that there are 40+ garage sales in one day in one city. I love that they put a couple sentences of what they have at each. I love that you get a map showing you exactly where to drive. I love that in one fell swoop we can be in and out. I love that then that shortens my garage sales days to just 3 Saturdays in one year instead of every weekend. I love it when you can find a big score. I love buying kids clothes for 25 cents.

This weekend was our first of 3 days I attempt to go garage-sale-ing. In the IC area the cities do these City Wide Garage Sale days and those are the only days I go to garage sales. I know I could do more, I know others who do this every weekend. But I do not have the sanity for that. I go 3 times, that's all I can take. I just pray that if we need anything it will be available to us on one of those 3 days.

For some reason, every time one of these days are scheduled Josh is out of town and it is always by chance, never planned that way. This weekend was no different as it was their yearly camping trip, and I, as a single parent for the weekend, bring all 3 cuties with me. In previous years I would enlist a friend to sit in the car while I do an in/out of the sales. This definitely can make the whole ordeal much better for me but this time I did not do that.

We had only 1 hour to do any garage sales in CV and then we had to go to Jeremiah's last soccer game, so I braved it by myself. The whole time driving there I was just praying for one big score. The last 2 years I hit one big score and was praying for that again. I was also praying for the kids to be on their best behavior. Thanks to all my additional prayer, I was less nervous and God was really giving me the peace that if He wanted us to find a good deal, He would lead us to it. Definitely made me less stressed than normal. (Weird to pray for a garage sale, but the bible tells us to pray without ceasing and sometimes that means garage sales.)

On the one hand I could say, why go then? Why not skip it? On the other hand, why not? If we can get-r-done we can rake in a ton of savings, the savings pull far outweighs any of my other dislikes about garage-sale-ing.

I remember a few years ago a dad telling me that with boys you can never have enough play clothes. I didn't quite realize it at the time, but over the last couple years I SO understand now. Thankfully we have a wonderful hand-me-down source for the boys so for the most part they are good with play clothes, I just have to fill in some "nice" clothes here and there. However, I am now realizing that Miriam is in need of the same stash of play clothes. Wearing "nice" clothes to play in is not good.

This year I was on the quest for play clothes and the first house we hit had girls clothes for 25 cents each! I got $10 worth of clothes for Miriam ranging from 3 to 5 and she has two ful