“Swapping”….better than Shopping?
This Saturday, we had a MASSIVE GARAGE SALE. In the first 15 years of our marriage my husband and I lived in 13 different houses so accumulating extra unnecessary possessions was not an option. But over the past 20 years we have lived in the same house. During this time we have raised four daughters who are now all happily married. Although they have all moved into their own homes (except for Bekah and her husband, Ashkon, who are in transition after living overseas for 2 years), many boxes of their prized possessions have remained stored in our garage. So, Bekah and I have been cleaning, organizing, sorting and purging our house for the last month.
The day of the garage sale was a beautiful summer day and we had a constant stream of folks coming to find gently used treasures. In the middle of the afternoon, a car drove up that had a huge frame of some sort on the roof. Typically you have a few professional garage sale shoppers drop by throughout the day with a big trailer attached to the back of their car or truck full of random items they have collected all day, but this car brought something different. Three young people got out of the car and we asked what was on top of their car. They proceeded to tell us about their day and how they had been going from one garage sale to another, trading one gently used item from the previous garage sale with something at the next sale. When they arrived at our place they had a huge paining on top of their car to trade with anything we wanted to trade. We really did not want a huge painting but thinking that this was a great creative way for young people to spend a Saturday, we asked what else they had to trade and they offered a fairly new tripod. We wanted to participate in their game and so we told them to look around at all the remaining items. They found an old pair of skis and a Mexican hot chocolate stirring tool that they wanted and we made a fantastic trade-a tripod for an old pair of skis and a wooden hot chocolate stirring tool. We asked them what they called their game and where they had learned of this fascinating and creative way to spend time having good clean fun. They said they had just thought of the idea that morning and had been having fun all day. We chatted with them a bit more and my son-in-law decided we should name the game “SWAPPING” because they were trading (swapping) items from one garage sale to another, thus swapping one man’s trash for another man’s treasure all throughout our community.
We had so much fun talking to these young people and we told them that their idea was so unique that we would love to write about it on our blog. They helped us turn a day of hard work into a day of fun! So the next time you have a Saturday morning free, take an item you no longer want to a local garage sale and give “SWAPPING” a try. You never know what treasure you may find.
When is the lst time you had some good clean creative fun? You should try SWAPPING!
