Garage sale experience

I wrote post about “Garage Sales in Iowa “ few days back. Today in NC we had our community garage sale. It’s not NC culture and I was not expecting big response like Iowa. However, the response was even lesser than expected.  All the efforts gone waste, I was thinking. My kids and husband were super excited in the beginning but I can see their excitement draining from their face. Later , I decided to change my mindset and give it a little positive tweak. No judgment, no rationalization and just experiencing the experience. As I changed my perspective, things started looking little better.  Me and my family, first time after so many years, were sitting outside having family time. Whoever showed up, we greeted with enthusiasm. In the beginning , my little one was asking people too many questions and asking them to buy things.. embarrassing right? Later I explained him why it is imp to give people some space and just greet people. He changed his behavior. He would  smile and say hi . He would make small general conversation if appropriate such as checking with kid what grade he or she is in. He may not understand theory behind human emotions but knowingly or unknowingly he was showing up with correct attitude. Of course , When I tried to explain same thing  to my older kid he just shrugged  and went back to reading. I learned that my kids have different personalities, different liking and therefore different responses. I learned  to give them some space.  We went as family into our neighbors homes and had a nice chat with them. We also found good books in the process for my kids to read. We ended up earning ~ $20 way less compared to Iowa. But the best part is all of this remainaing unsold stuff is directly going to goodwill achieving my declutter objective.
There were some other lessons that I learned as well. It would have been great if we would have put garage sale in the evening from 5 to 8 pm or in the morning from 8 to 12 pm. Mid afternoon time is way too sweaty. We found out town of cary doesn’t allow Garage sale signs on roads. So we need to arrange it better.
Overall , it was a good learning experience.