National Garage Sale Day – August 12, 2017
How to Celebrate National Garage Sale Day
Hop in your car and cruise your town’s ritzier neighborhoods for a garage sale.
Protip: garage sales are sometimes referred to as “estate sales,” particularly when associated with negative life events such as divorce, bankruptcy, or death. So, bonus points for the opportunity to ghoulishly pick over the remains of another person’s life.
Find an estate sale, park your car, and make your way through the one man’s trash that may soon be your treasure. As you peruse the goods, imagine how the items fit together to tell the story of their previous owner’s life – a collection of commemorative thimbles, the complete Jim Nabors’ discography, a burlap sack of human hair.
Another bonus of estate sales: they typically allow access to the entire home. Take advantage of this. Pace the halls, flop onto couches, avail yourself of the facilities.
In the powder room just off the main hall, as you wash your hands with a shell-shaped soap, notice a snow globe beside the sink. Like everything else in the room, it will be nautically themed – its ceramic base carved with waves crashing against rocky cliffs, and, inside the globe, a miniature seascape: a golden shore, a cozy cottage, a lighthouse.
Dry your hands. Shake the snow globe. Wonder why you’re crying.
Return the snow globe to the sink. Turn away, and open the door to the linen closet. Instead of towels and toilet paper, find only a single, bare light bulb hanging from the ceiling above a stone pedestal with a shiny red button at its top.
Press the button.
This Is a Narrative Day
This is our fourth Narrative Days – a post featuring a light narrative that threads through other national days. Previous entries, in order, were:
Please check them out to see what’s happened so far! Fair warning: Narrative Days will be intermittently sprinkled throughout the month. We hope you’ll stay tuned to see what happens next.
Links & Learning
You can find some pretty sweet stuff at garage/estate sales.
- 7 Garage Sale Finds That Were Worth Millions – The Richest
- 8 Amazing Garage Sale Finds – Mental Floss
- 5 Things You Should Buy at Estate Sales (and 3 to Skip) – Huffington Post
Why do snow globes exist?
- A Brief History of Snow Globes – Mental Floss
- The Accidental Invention of the Snow Globe – Martha Stewart
- The Family Company That Invented the Snow Globe – BBCNews
A Relevant GIF
Pretty much exactly this.
You Can Take It With You
Snowglobe art you can make your own.
- Seabound by Barlena
- Ocean Globe by Twelve13
- Mermaid Snow Globe by Elizabeth Weglein
- Waterworld by Amanda Pays
- Grand Canyon by Ashley Styles
Wonder what happens next? Follow the FMTCD blog and receive an email notification each time a new post goes live…
National Days Questionable Advice & Information advice diy estate sales experimental fiction facts fiction flash fiction garage sales how to celebrate national garage sale day interactive fiction national day National Days national garage sale day short stories short story
11 Comments Leave a comment ›