Done Like a Duck Dinner

“Women are hard to figure out.
They love lingerie and they
love garage sales, but they
don't seem to like getting
garage-sale lingerie as a gift.”
- Brad Osberg

The semi-annual rummage sale was held at my mom's nursing home today. My sister Nancy and I have been organizing the merchandise donations for the sale for seven years now. Every time we've done the sale in the last couple of years I have sworn it will be my last time. I swore it again when we finished the sale today.

We spend days getting ready for the event, washing, cleaning, repairing and pricing the donations. Some years we get a lot of merchandise. I didn't mind those years. Some changes in nursing home management and attitudes have changed the process of acquiring the merchandise of late. So instead of putting up notices requesting merchandise donations, management is only willing to put up notices requesting bake sale donations. They somehow believe the merchandise will come our way regardless of whether or not we ask. It became obvious a week or so ago that it wasn't going to be the case this time. We had very few household goods donations and no jewellery donations. Jewellery is what the residents most hanker for. So in an effort to spare the residents from being disappointed, Nan and I have been working double time to create an inventory. We've culled our own jewel boxes, hit up friends and neighbours and bought jewellery grab bags from Value Village on the chance we will find enough in them that can be salvaged for sale. We did, indeed, come across some worthwhile items and I spent many hours cleaning and repairing those items. Each item was then prepared for presentation and priced. What we didn't beg or buy, we made - a couple of dozen pairs of earrings made by me, a dozen hand-painted birdhouses made by Nan. All of this activity is funded from our pockets.

We started out this morning at 10 A.M. and worked through the day, finishing at 6 P.M. Two and a half of those hours were spent in the sale, the balance in setting up the sale and in cleaning up afterwards. All of our efforts netted sales of just a few hundred dollars, much of it raised 10, 25 or 50 cents at a time. I listened to staff complain about the price of the earrings I made (all sold at either one or two dollars per pair) which we were selling for a fraction of what it cost me to make them. I listened to a complaint from a volunteer about the $5 price tag on an exquisite sterling pendant. I dealt with a resident meltdown, mediated wheelchair wars and gave a refund to an old lady who was suffering buyer's remorse on a pair of 50 cent earrings and then spent another twenty minutes choosing a pair she liked better.

I'm tired. I just want to take a bath and eat all the baked goods I bought at the sweet table. And I don't want to do this anymore.