Operation Learn: Post-wide Yard Sale

Monday, May 21, 2012

Post-wide Yard Sale

Saturday was the annual post-wide yard sale. There is often one held in the fall, but the weather can be so unpredictable that the fall yard sale is usually not as big or as well attended as the spring sale.

A post-wide yard sale is exactly what its name describes: a giant yard sale (or collection of sales, rather), held all over post. You can host an individual sale on your own, just as you would a regular yard sale...or you can host one as a group. In our case, we hosted one as a giant group - our Battalion FRG - and each unit here contributed to the sale. We aggregated our sale items on Friday and had a "pricing party," and some of our soldiers brought over tents, tarps and tables. We staged as much as we could the night before!

Real Army guys sorting through, well, plastic Army guys - getting ready for the Sale!

The sale kicked off at 7am on Saturday morning, which meant that we started setting everything out around 6:15am! We had breakfast and other refreshments for our volunteers - delish!

The early shoppers, some arriving around 6:45am!, had the best selection and scored some of the very best deals on the unique items. We had a pretty strong surge of folks from 7am - 9am, but it was pretty steady all the way through noon. There were some stragglers after the official close (noon) but we started packing up around 12:20. Anything remaining was donated to a local charity.

Nearing the end of the sale. Still organized, but very "picked over"

Since we hosted this sale as a Battalion, the proceeds went to our FRG (Family Readiness Group) funds - net of expenses, we did very well bringing in some good funds!

The morning was early and tiring, but we really did have a great, good time!