Garage s by Valorie Lennox The Review Spring is sprung The grass is riz And with the sun Comes springtime biz Garages bloom with bric-a-bracs As everyone Sells their knick-knacks. Garage sale season. Sale signs springing up along with the daffo- dils when spring cleaning pro- duces boxes of discards. Folks out for a stroll with nickels in their jeans drop into a sale, searching for bargains, while others list the garage sales in an area and make the excursion an excuse for a weekend drive. Reasons for holding a garage sale vary. Clearing out closets, moving or club fundraising are common spurs to getting out the tables and displaying the merchan- dise. “Ive never done this before. I was surprised at how much stuff I found to sell,” says Shannon Noyce, who hosted a team fund- Taising garage sale at her Sidney home last weekend. 7 . WHAT IS IT wonders Kris Christensen of Sidney. Most of the players on the 17-member team scoured their homes looking for saleable items. Noyce found a child’s hat topped with a propeller, a remnant of a costume her husband once wore in the Sidney Days Sleggs Build-a- Boat contest. Diana English, clearing out in anticipation of a move later this summer, found lots of music books. English teaches music and her mother, a music teacher and singer, had passed on the books. She sorted items out for the garage sale while reorganizing the es I A NEAR-NEW CHILD, only 17 months old, turned up on a sale table last weekend. There were no offers on Kevin Thynne — perhaps buyers feared high after sale maintenance costs. house following renovations. Pre- paring for the sale took three to four hours, she estimated. Joy Jackson, an admitted collec- tor, is selling her home and mov- ing. She needed to clear some of the accumulation of 20 years. DREAMS OF ROCK STAR= DOM for Scott Christen- sen, 8, of Sidney. “T have a lot of stuff,” she said before the sale. “I’m a collector myself and I have stuff I won’t get Rent-A-Wife Specializing In helping busy people organize their lives. 656-7744 Y “We keep the homefires burning.” rid of.” Ever since she started to pack she has been putting stuff aside for the sale. She estimated it took 10 hours to get ready. “There are things I hate to throw away because they’re still usable.” Noyce put in about 20 hours getting ready for the team sale. Part of the time included contact-- ing team members and arranging for their donations to be picked up or dropped off. Their home was chosen as the most centrally located. In pricing items, she considered what she would pay for the item, prices seen at other garage sales and, for some new items, checked store prices and charged less. She and her husband Paul are both garage sale fans. “We think it’s the easiest way to get rid of things and raise funds for the team,”’ she said. The Mixed Nuts Team is spon- sored by Ron’s Disposal but needs to raise money for tournament entry fees, Noyce explained. She hoped the sale would raise several hundred dollars. “IT know people like to bargain at garage sale. We have got so much stuff that I think we'll do all right,’ Noyce said. Jackson used her collecting experience to price her “antiquey things” and generally tried to put reasonable prices on the other items. Her daughters also brought in items to sell. “It’s mostly to get rid of things,” she said. English also used other garage sales as a guideline for pricing her items, which included dishes and lighting fixtures. “T just hope it doesn’t rain,” GARAGE SALE CLUTTER may hide treasures for careful seekers, like the hundreds who turned Out fo Peninsula garage sales last weekend. ale season strikes the Peninsula Early birds sirike sales People came early. Jackson had someone call and drop in to buy Friday before the sale.Saturday moming Jackson handled her biggest rush of cus- tomers between 8:30 a.m. and 9:45 a.m. The sale was supposed to Start at 10 a.m. “1 didn’t realize it was going to be this big a deal,” she said. She thought she had! over 100 custom- ers. Her children showed up with items to sell and stayed for the day. “We ended up being a garden party as well.” Together they collected $680. “We did pretty good, actually,” Jackson said. At the end of the sale Sunday, three elderly ladies who had just returned from Reno stopped by. They told Jackson they were broke, but decided to go to the garage sale wer buying groceries. “They had a good time going hrough everything we had left,” Jackson said. English didn’t plan to start her sale until 9 a.m. She was still putting out boxes when customers Started showing up at 8:30 a.m. “The swarm started coming,” she said. She estimated 200 people attended. She met some people from out- of-town who dropped in to the sale while walking around the neigh- borhood. She had many small _ sales, including some music books, and raised about $80. “A lot of people came with nickels and dimes in their pockets, looking for teal bargains,” she said. The softball team’s sale wasn’t scheduled to start until 10'a.m. but CAPITAL GAINS If you have a capital gain or loss to report on your income f tax return this year, bring your return to H&R Block. Our specially trained tax return preparers can save you time and money. So this year let the specialists at H&R Block help you get the biggest refund you have coming or pay the lowest legitimate tax. Don’t be confused by the many tax law changes. The specialists at H&R Block always have the answers you need. iF THERE’S EVER A TIME FOR |S aan a] HéR BLOCK IT’S NOW 6A 9843 - 2nd Sireet SIDNEY 656-2411 1205 Verdier Ave. BRENTWOOD BAY 652-1482 customers were at the site by 8:30 a.m., Noyce said. The sale was very busy Saturday and quiet on Sunday. = Noyce estimated a few hundred people stopped by. The group raised $500. “That was more than we thought we'd make. That buys our way into three toumaments,’* Noyce said. The most memorable moment™ occurred Sunday evening, after the sale was over. A woman showed up at the house with a quarter — to pay for a toy her child had taken from the A BARGAIN WORLD found * by Nicole Bakes, 11. table. 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