GARAGE SALE REGULAR (picking up a sale object): What’s this?

YOU: That’s my grandmother’s brooch. It’s twenty-four-carat gold, it has eight flawless diamonds, and these are real pearls in the center here. It was presented to my grandmother personally by the King of England, whose crest is on the back.

GARAGE SALE REGULAR: I’ll give you a dollar for it.

The Regulars will quickly pick you clean of everything that anybody might want to buy, so when your sale actually gets under way, it will consist of people getting out of their cars, examining your possessions the way you might view an unexpected leech in your pasta, then asking you: “Is this it?” The only thing they’ll be interested in buying is anything on which you have carefully placed a large sign stating: NOT FOR SALE. They’ll walk up, read the sign carefully, then ask you: “Is this for sale?”

It can make you feel vaguely inadequate, watching people reject your possessions. At least that’s how it affects me. I find myself wanting to please these people. I want to say, “If you don’t see what you like, we’ll order it!” But of course this tends to defeat the whole purpose of the garage sale, so the best thing to do is just sit there grimly until the sale is over and you can throw everything away.

Okay, now that we’ve cleared out some of the dead wood, it’s time to proceed with the next step in the moving process, which is ...

Getting A Bunch Of Empty Liquor Boxes And Hurling Things Into Them At Random

You won’t start out this way, of course. You’ll start by selecting the objects with great care and wrapping them up very gently. You’ll keep this up for a week or so, packing box after box, making regular trips