In 1980, I had a garage sale.

“Never again!” I declared.

But just as the brain blocks out labor pains to perpetuate the species, it blocks out negative garage sale memories.  Maybe to perpetuate decluttering.

In any case, when my Significant Other proposed one last month, I could only recall that in 1980 the kids and I had sold enough odds and ends to go to Sea World.

“It was incredible!” I said.

Since he had never had a garage sale and I am apparently the Queen of Repressed Memories, we sallied forth. The goal was to unload in two days a combined accumulation of 50-plus years on an unsuspecting world.

Ironically, for the occasion we purchased two more T-shirts for our already overstuffed collections.  They said “Simplify! Simplify!” and came from Walden Pond. Thoreau, we convinced ourselves, would be proud.

As we began our respective searches through basements, closets and drawers, the reason for “Never again!” slowly came back.

The world breaks down between those who save things “just in case” and those who figure they can always run to the store to replace a 34-year-old eyeglass case.

Those of us in the former category have a little twinge of “What-if?” angst every time a long-lost morsel hits the sale table. What if it would come in handy someday? What if next month we would see the very same item on Antiques Road Show, appraised for a cool $2 million? And what if the person so eagerly snatching it up is smarter than we are?

I’m not sure if our customers were brilliant or utterly optimistic. Despite the “no early birds” signs, some arrived as early as 7:30 a.m. for the 9 a.m. sale. They waited with varying degrees of good cheer and then pounced on old bicycles, tables, toys and lamps like the vintage treasures they may have been.

Some, wandering through the house to see tagged furniture, even began pawing through cabinets and drawers.

“How much for the picture?” one asked the SO, who was astonished to see a photo of his sister’s wedding.

“Not for sale,” he said, and rushed in to secure the area.

So eager were the bargain-hunters that by noon the second day, we were eating from unsold pie plates with silverware borrowed from the next-door neighbor.

In one moment of panic, we thought we had sold a bicycle belonging to a shopper. In another, one of us sold a bedroom suite to Shopper No. 1 while the other was selling the mattress to Shopper No. 2.  And the first morning, I tried to sell a shopper his own hat. At least he said it was his hat. I let him keep it.

The final tally was respectable – at least enough to buy replacements for things we shouldn’t have sold in the first place. And, with a good deal of help from our favorite charities, we cleared a lot of clutter, possibly to acquire more clutter. I hope not.

While our memories are fresh, we are enacting two rules: (1) No one is allowed to say, ‘We shouldn’t have sold that’ and (2) We only return from trips with pictures and things we can eat, drink or actually need to wear.

As for the T-Shirts and the sale, would Thoreau say we did “Simplify Simplify”?

I suspect he’d say, “Never again.”  At least in the present moment.

Copyright 2013 Pat Snyder