The house we had in the country in Illinois sold in three months.  After it was first under contract to a buyer, we had to sell things we weren’t going to have room for in our new home in Colorado.  Where to begin?  We really didn’t have enough items to have an auction, nor did I want it.   It wouldn’t have done any good to have a yard sale as people would not come twenty miles out from the Quad Cities to go to one.  So that wasn’t an option.

By chance, I saw an offer in a Quad City newspaper offering a free ad for anyone wishing to put items for sale in the paper.   It was for a limited time, and the dollar amount had a limit on it; prices of each item had to be listed.   I placed an ad for a couple of metal tables that I had used for work benches in the basement.  I received many calls on them, and some people came to look at them.  The first ones there bought the tables and a couple of other things I’d had in the basement.  When a man came later and found out they had been sold, I told him to go out to the barn where my husband had more things, including a tractor and equipment.  I also mentioned that I had a lot of Christmas lights to sell.  It was one of those deals where I had decorated a little one year, then, each of the following years I added yet more lights, and before I knew it, my property could easily be seen at night from a satellite in the sky!    The fellow told me he wasn’t interested in the decorations, but his neighbor’s wife liked to decorate for Christmas and might be interested.  The man, who  I suspected liked to take things to auctions, bought a lot of items that were in the barn including three great big cement culverts.  He also told my husband that his neighbor was looking for a tractor to buy and that he would tell him about the one we had for sale.

A few days later, the man’s neighbor came and brought his wife.  He followed my husband out to the barn to see the tractor, while his wife waited in their small van.  I was sitting on the front steps, looking at my quarry.  There she was, sitting there so innocently, and soon she wouldn’t know what hit her.  I invited her onto the small porch and, we talked a bit.  Knowing she was the lady who liked to decorate her home and yard for Christmas, I got around to telling her about the lights I had for sale.  She was interested and followed me to the basement to look at them.  She was enthusiastic and bought them all!  And, she bought two lawn sculptures I’d made from wire that were in the shapes of deer.  Each had lights on them.  

Her husband bought the tractor and equipment that went with it, including two big A frames used as an aid for lifting heavy things.  When the man’s wife saw the A frames that had been loaded into the truck, she exclaimed, “My swing!”  She knew that her husband was going to make a swing out of them for her yard and was excited about it.   She had wanted one for a long time.  We sold everything we needed to sell.  And to think that it all started with that one free ad!