Lockdown rules lifted so it gave us the opportunity to hold a garage sale. Now I can’t lie it wasn’t the biggest success ever but we managed to reduce our surplus a bit and anything is a bonus. We still have heaps to get rid of one way or another. Options are beg people to take it, major skip bin, fill the footpath to overflowing in the hope people will come and take it….just to name a few ideas. Minimising is very liberating but can also be hard work.
Well we have stories a plenty from the early morning. It starts with people arriving at 6am when we advertised 7am start but to be honest we expected that. It’s a bonus having a lock on your gate, however we gave in and opened up early anyways. Then of course we received all the second hand dealers/onsellers. It was amusing to listen to them greeting each other “Hey Bill suppose you got all the bargains already”, “Hey Joan how’s your morning, are you loaded up yet” and other like stories. Now that’s all well and good and good luck to them all, we all have a living to make however I have to admit that I was getting seriously cheesed off very early in the piece. Everything on offer was basically being given away yet they still had the balls to ask us to reduce the $3 item to $1 – what the!
After an hour in I accepted defeat and just let anyone and everyone have anything for whatever price they wanted to pay. It’s not all negative, there are some wonderful people out there and we met a few beauts over the day, listened to their stories and shared ours. Funny these one’s never haggled when making a buy.
By late afternoon I discovered that Facebooks’ Buy/Swap&Sell was much more effective and when people picked up goods purchased they got “sort of” forced to look at what else was on offer.
We continue to sell bits and pieces and will do so until we finally decided to book the skip bin.
This morning our Jewellery Cleaner arrived. Wow it’s amazing. With little effort it cleans amazingly. This is very exciting as we can now make all of Fred’s new creations sparkle in the way they deserve and hopefully will be able to make a few bucks offering a jewellery cleaning service. This will be one of the services we will be able to peddle while on the road. A couple of bucks here and there are all helpful to keeping the wine barrel topped up.
If you have any jewellery you would like brightened up just let us know.
Did you guess what it is? Well for those who guessed it’s the fuel tank for our diesel heater you would be correct. For those who thought I was storing wine inside the bus, well you are also correct but I do it in a much more civilised manner and that’s for another story. Lol!
In Fred’s typical form, he left the bus quietly after lunch and while I happily worked away in the bus I could hear the noise of cutting, welding and drilling. Next thing I know Fred’s pops his head back in the bus and says come and take a look at this. While I’ve been slaving away working, keeping him in the manner he is accustomed to, he was busy outside fitting our diesel heater to it’s forever home. I say “forever home” as he actually installed the heater a few weeks ago but the fuel tank was sitting happily in the bulbar – probably not ideal for when we decide to drive off. Don’t tell him I said so but he is an absolute genius. Not actually purchasing anything he fossicked around the yard and found enough “decent suitable stuff” to fabricate the housing for the fuel tank and then cuts into the side of the bus and fits it beside the bus fuel tank ready to be fuelled easily when necessary. He assures me the door is coming.
Well that’s all folks for tonight, stay tuned…….there’s heaps more in progress.