Itty Bitty Garage Sale Signs at 60 MPH

Welcome to Fucking Over It Fridays

My weekly ritual of publicly spiraling so you don't have to.

Where I dump all the sass, burnout, and pissed-off energy I’ve collected all week and serve it up on an unstable platter.

**What can I say? I can't afford therapy.** 

This week’s victim?

Itty Bitty Garage Sale Signs.
Especially when I'm trying to read said sign.
In a moving car.
Going 60 miles per hour.

DOWN A COUNTRY FUCKING ROAD.

We all know about the healthcare crisis in the United States. I have not had an eye exam since before my daughter was born, and my glasses broke years ago.

There is no way in hell I could read the tiny handwriting on those 12-inch by 12-inch signs, even if I was standing still and 10 feet away.

Please, I am begging—get bigger signs. Then leave those bitches like breadcrumbs, because my sense of direction is about as good as Hansel and Gretel's. 

I know what you’re thinking: “Damn, that’s a lot of anger over a few signs.” But let me tell you about garage sales in the Midwest. They are a big fucking deal. 

They are especially a BFD for me. First, because you guys already know how broke I am (pretty sure I’ve mentioned it). When you’re broke, garage sales can save your life—seriously.

Okay, maybe just your budget—come on, can’t I be a little dramatic?

Second, because I come from healthy reseller stock. What is a reseller, you ask?

Well, it’s exactly what it sounds like. As defined by google.com: "it is a person or company that sells something they have bought to someone else."

However, around here it is a way of life. Think of a mix between "American Pickers" (not the funny hosts, the pack rats they buy from), mixed with "Sanford and Son", with a touch of "Storage Wars". It is my mom and stepdad’s side hustle.

We spend plenty of time at local auctions or scouring garage sales for items we can sell for a profit (well, for me, I just like to own stuff). Sometimes they will buy full storage units or cleanouts (think everything left over that doesn’t sell at an estate sale when someone passes). Needless to say, our property is always at its capacity for stuff. Then we stop at another sale for more.

I, of course, help them a lot.

This week, we’re getting set up for maybe our last sale of the season (fingers crossed we can go two weekends in a row). Instead of being a fucking hypocrite about the damn signs, I’ve decided to make us a new one using all found and repurposed stuff lying around.

luckily enough, my mom had set aside the perfect thing for this project: somebody’s old carpentry marketing sign. It was a little rusty and a little warped, but could I expect anything less?

That bad boy needed a good hose down. This good boy needs one too. (I forgot to get a picture of my sign before I painted it, so cat pic for tax.)

Then I just covered that bitch in reclaimed flat black paint (kinda like makeup for old shit). I ended up using four cans. I think that’s because it was old, but buying new paint wasn’t in my budget of zero.

I did all of that and let it dry overnight. I wanted to really make sure the letters were readable and large. Think bigger than a 90-year-old’s text setting on their phone big.

It was time to problem-solve since none of our stencils came close to being big enough. However, a sheet of printer paper is 8.5-inches by 11-inches. So I decided just to write the word “SALE”: each letter would be as big as I could get it on an individual sheet.

Now, since Microsoft Word no longer has WordArt (WordArt Pro circa 2005), I used Adobe Express (thank you to my Etsy shop for the free subscription perk). 

Adobe Express made it easier to manipulate the text size to fit on the paper. I also made sure the letters were outline only (printer ink $$$$).

Next I got to play with a razor blade — ah, good times. I used a straight edge (I liked the yardstick best; it also helped weigh the paper down) and one of those scrapbooker’s cutting pad things. I just cut out the outline so the paper became a stencil — an almost 8.5 x 11 in stencil.

Then I measured my sign (just over 36 inches across). A little stencil math (8.5 × 4 = 34 inches), and I came up with an inch buffer on each side. I used the width of the yardstick to create padding across the top. I painstakingly leveled and used painter’s tape to put the stencils on.

it was too windy to paint that day, so I went ahead and turned the sign over to add the stencils to the other side. Remember my one-inch padding on the sides from my math and how beautiful it worked?

I did not take into account the frame on the other side. I trusted my math. I ended up with no padding after the “E.” Oh fucking well — all of that ADHD/OCD just to be thwarted in the end.

Then some bright orange paint (again found in the garage) and bam — a goddamn garage sale sign that can be read while driving.

Bonus points: it’s reusable, so, ya know, carbon footprint; reduce, recycle, reuse; save the polar bears, etc.

I am one of the laziest people in the world, so if I can create a legible sign for a sale, anyone can.

In fact, I'm a nice guy, I'll let you have my stencil templates for free when you subscribe here. One less excuse to not have a good-sized sale sign. 

Really, it can be as creative or as basic as the mind can imagine.

Want another free material with the stencil? Grab your neighbor’s MAGA sign. Paint that bitch black and screw the IRS with your unclaimed garage sale income, my friends.

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~ Midwest & Making It

Get Caught Up:                                  ~ Last Time on FOIF: Ode to my Failures: A Burnout Ballad

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