Reason 264

Garage sales. My mother has lived in the same two-story house smack dab in the middle of suburbia for over thirty years, so you can just imagine how many treasures are tucked into cupboards, closets and in the crawl space under the stairs that haven't seen the light of day since Clinton was in office. It also doesn't help that she's a bit of a packrat, a trait genetically passed on to me, and was generous enough to let me stash all sorts of odds and ends that won't fit in my tiny studio condo on top of the basement pool table. Yep, my childhood home was on its way to becoming the star of an episode of "Hoarders." So, what's a red-blooded, money-loving American homeowner with an already packed schedule to do to combat all that clutter? Hold a garage sale, of course! Last week, after being home from vacation for a mere day, my mom and I started pulling boxes full of crap out of the basement in order to hold marathon pricing sessions while working our way through all of the TiVoed shows taped while we were in Oregon. Countless hours were spent writing "$1" on tiny white labels and exclaiming "Who the hell gave us this ugly thing?!" to one another between bites of take-out. On Saturday we held the actual sale with eight or nine tables covered in junk we hoped other morons would desperately want for the low, low price of fifty cents. Mom was brave enough to sit out front with her change purse and a Sookie Stackhouse book, schmoozing customers and refusing to make outrageous deals with them, while I continued to price items inside and yell at the dog for constantly whining about all the strangers on our property. Yep, it was a pretty fun way to spend six hours. In the end all we had to show for our hard work was a combined $140 and two carloads of unsold merchandise for the local Goodwill, but, as my mother so wisely stated, "that's 140 bucks we didn't have before." So, Jason, if you ever find yourself looking around your house and wondering where all that useless crap came from, I'd be more than happy to help you price it and put it on display in your garage. I'll even share my family's super-secret key to making eye-catching signs. All I ask in return is you treat me to a couple slices of piping hot pizza for lunch and pitch a couple of quarters my way when we close up shop. Now, how much do you think we could get for the props you've stolen from "How I Met Your Mother"?