By Saturday evening, the spare bedroom, a good part of the living room and most of the porch was completely full of, well, crap.
This weekend marked the second (hopefully annual) Crap Swap that we have hosted. Friends and neighbors bring over the clothing, toys, knickknacks and other items they no longer want and let each other take what they want. (Think of it as a garage sale where everything is free.) Afterward strangers are welcome to browse before everything that is left is donated to a thrift store.
The weekend started off badly.
The swap was scheduled for Saturday afternoon and evening, and rain had been in the forecast for days before. Finally Friday night the forecast for Saturday looked good, with maybe a 5 or 10 percent chance of rain. But when I awoke Saturday morning it again looked bleak. We postponed til noon Sunday and sure enough, it rained all afternoon.
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| Pretty sure more kids clothing came out after this photo! |
Sunday, on the other hand, was cool but progressively warmer, with no rain in sight. We filled something like 10 tables -- mostly with crap, but also with yummy potluck dishes. A few dozen friends and neighbors showed up and took home their finds, and it barely looked like anything was gone. I posted it on some local Facebook groups, and many people took armloads -- bags and boxes filled with stuff -- and still it hardly looked like there was a dent. At the end of the day, there were 20 boxes, bags and large items at the curb, ready for the thrift store to pick up on Monday.
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| Curb alert! |
By mid-afternoon Monday, it was all gone.
The swap was so much bigger than last year. I was outside at 7 a.m. Sunday to set up for the noon party and just barely got everything out, even though most people had delivered their items days or even weeks ahead of time and most of the kids clothes were already separated by size. Still, it was a fun afternoon, and everyone seemed to take home a few treasures.
