This morning I got up, checked my e-mail, puttered around the house a bit before it hit me: It’s Rummage Sale Day! I quickly ran through the shower, yanked my dripping wet hair into a bun and flew out the door with the kids and hit the on base rummage sales. I made out with two flower pots, a toy car, and a 2T Harley Davidson black, leather jacket. I spent two dollars.

That’s what I call a successful morning. Last week was pretty good too. I got an HUGE outdoor plant for three bucks, a fifty cent Winnie the Pooh video for the kids, and a five dollar mountain bike that had been ridden once.

Rummage sales haven’t always intrigued me. When I was a kid my crazy grandmother used to drag me to every discount store and garage sale that crossed our path. She was the Queen of the Blue Light Specials, slowly nickling and diming herself into bankruptcy. We would stop at every sale and she would buy ugly little knickknacks to add to one of the four massive curio cabinets or various decorative tables in her house. She had so much bric a brac that when I ran through her house as a child it literally rattled, and I would get hollered at to stop running in the house before I broke something! Very few of her pieces had any true value and I lived with the constant fear of her dying and my having to go through all of the clutter.

When I was a kid I didn’t mind going to the garage sales as much, after all there were toys to be had, not to mention the piles upon piles of children’s books! Grandmother was always good for a few books, so I tolerated these rummage raids with a good sense of humor. It wasn’t until I hit my teenage years that I put my foot down.

It had gotten to the point where she would send me home with so much ugly bric a brac that I had started having to throw things out just to make room for the new. I didn’t want it and she didn’t need to waste her money on it, and I had a job and a library card, so I could get my own reading material. So, slowly we stopped checking out the rummage sales. I maintained a firm ban against them until I was an adult, and even then it was only an occasional thing.

Just a few months ago I was clued in to how completely amazing the on base rummage sales are. You see, civilians are just trying to get rid of a few pieces of junk, whereas military folk are PCSing and have a weight limit and a space limit and really truly need to get all the stuff out of the house. You can find tons of clothing, movies, toys, houseplants, furniture, and other goodies, all in great condition simply because military families can’t be hauling six bins of baby clothing to Germany and back. It’s just not practical, so they practically give the stuff away.

With the invent of ebay, some of this junk does truly have value. Last October I found two baby Halloween costumes for a quarter a pop. After a week on ebay they sold for over thirty dollars. Not a bad turn around for a fifty cent investment! So, between the chance of finding something with good resale value, and the fact that my children always seem to need clothes, and I’m addicted to houseplants, I’ve become one of those crazies who scours the base paper every Friday and gets out of bed way too early for a Saturday so I can be the first person to buy the junk. Not every week has a great find, but the few times I’ve hit the jackpot (try six pairs of baby shoes for a dollar fifty!) make it very sweet indeed.