Auntie Kate The Resale Expert

Nothing sadder than the picked-over remains of holiday goods.  We just started the policy that the consignment period for holiday-specific goods ends the day after the holiday, no matter when in the preceding 60 days the item came in. We’ve done this now for Halloween and Thanksgiving, and yesterday, Dec. 27, was clear-out day for Christmas.

This is what the “holiday aisle” at Woman’s Exchange, a not-for-profit consignment shop, looked like at 9:30 am Saturday morning.  All of these items, unsold and unclaimed, have now become donations, and we need to remove them from the selling floor to make room for “real” stuff. Since the shop’s in Sarasota, January through March is actually our busiest time of year and boy, do we need the space!

Dressed in black (I was doing the whole anti-Santa thing, taking Christmas away!) I got started with my trusty little cart. Away with the old, in with the even older! (You’ll see what I mean in a minute.)

Packing the holiday goods into a shopping cart to be left in the workroom area for the angel called Lee to deal with (Why an angel? She works 5 days and volunteers the 6th to keep the intake/ outgo area running as smoothly as it can with a handful of staff and a battalion of volunteers. And she lets me think she agrees with everything I say whether she does or doesn’t.) , the next step is cleaning. Can you beLIEVE the dust and must left behind? In case you’re curious, it took 7 shopping carts to clear the sales floor of holiday goods. Notice the last-minute bargain hunters.

Since this aisle is closest to the cashiers’ desks, we tend to put some more expensive items here, including some spectacular antique silver trays and serving pieces ranging in price from $150 to $25 (the most expensive goods are in locked and lighted cases near the jewelry area.)  So I took (more!) shopping carts throughout the store and gathered up the silver, the silver plate, the expensive-est cut glass and china, and made this aisle our Luxury Living area. Here’s what it looked like after 4 (FOUR!) hours of work.

Why’d it take so long? Well, once I’d emptied the baker’s rack of the silver plate, I had to clean and re-set IT with glass vases pulled from the aisles of glassware and sit-arounds and the hutches which had held the sterling needed to be cleaned and re-merchandised, and as I pulled Christmas I had to sort out the not-necessarily-Christmas things like red candles and angels and find a home for THEM and that left holes in the china aisle and the glass aisle and even, for heaven’s sake, the stuffed-animal basket and you know how that all goes and all this on a Saturday when it was so busy the customers had to edge past one another sideways and sold couches were trundled through the crowds and Trudy had a lamp conk her in the head and boy am I glad I’m “just” a volunteer. 😉

But now, thank heavens, Christmas is past. Except for those 7 carts of donations Lee’ll be faced with Monday morning. Think I ought to go in and help her with it?