"Everyone deserves, and should have, one thing or activity that makes them completely happy. For some that happiness comes in the form of prayer, perhaps playing tennis, maybe sitting and talking with your mom, or even just waking up to the smell of coffee. However, everyone should have one simple activity, which makes you completely happy. I’d like to explain something that I do that makes me completely happy, and that thing is garage sale-ing, as is the proper name for it. Garage sale-ing takes me to a nostalgic place - perhaps the reason why I’m so blissfully happy when my mom asks me when I wake up on a Saturday morning, “want to go to a garage sale?”
Let me explain.
For as long as I can remember, my mom and I wake up early every Saturday morning during the summer and go to local garage sales. Sometimes it’s just one, but on the jack-pot weekends we go to five or six. Thursday’s afterschool my mom and I scan and scrutinize the local paper for upcoming garage sales and then map out each of our stops. We decide which sales we will hit first based on its relative closeness and how good the description of its goods sounds. A garage sale ad including items like tools, furniture, car parts, etc. gets low-priority, but ads with descriptions like household goods, knickknacks, and miscellaneous are bound to get a top spot.
My mom began garage sale-ing with her mom when she was a kid, and so it was with my mom and I. Garage sale-ing has become a type of tradition, with each ritual being carried out every Saturday morning in the summer.
Garage sale-ing is more than finding a good deal on something; it’s finding the gem amongst piles of rubble and the surge of excitement you feel when you know you’ve found something good. I can’t imagine the thousands of dollars we have saved by garage sale-ing, but the best is coming home with each new good and finding a way to repurpose it in our house. As I look around my kitchen, I notice all of the things we have collected over the years and putting them all together to create a home.
Part of the happiness and joy I get from garage sale-ing comes from the fact that I get to spend so much time with my mom and doing something that we both equally love. The other part comes from the excitement of buying an old antique item with a story behind it or just finding something really unique and interesting. One of my best finds was an old, engraved jewelry box with oriental details marked at $6. It wasn’t until a few years after I bought the jewelry box, I discovered a small gold and jade ring in a hidden compartment of the box – a true deal-busting find.
Even if I were a multi-billionaire, I’d continue to garage sale, and that’s simply because I love doing it. So, readers, what’s that one simple thing that brings you happiness? Happiness can be such a complex word with so many different meanings and connotations, but it’s pretty simple to sense the joy in going to a garage sale with your mom on a summer Saturday morning."
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