The Great Garage Sale

As we have lamented throughout these last 3 years, things are hard to get in Ecuador. Import taxes are extremely high and the country doesn’t do much of it’s own manufacturing. As such, there is an entire revolving market for departing and incoming international teachers. Among the most coveted items are: clothing and shoes, electronics, kitchen items, and believe it or not - lamps. I bet you never took your table lamps for granted, and you wouldn’t, until you moved to a country that has no Home Depot, Target, or Amazon.com and even the dinkiest of the little lamps will set you back $60-$80. So at around this time each year, departing teachers start unloading their excess home goods, and local teachers and/or new incoming teachers start buying them up.

Since Justin and I made the decision not to send a shipment to our new school, we have a lot of things to unload. And since we will only be relocating with a few suitcases each, the time has come to weed out the non-necessities.

I took my first crack at this a few weeks ago. I made a cursory pass through my closet, pulled out some old blouses and sweaters that no longer fit or fancy me, and I posted these items for sale on our google community “garage sale” page. I was priced to sell - between $6-$8 for tops, $10 for coats. These were all items that I was no longer even wearing, mind you. Well. My inbox was overloaded with customers! Within one week, I had sold everything and made a quick, cool $300. This ignited a fire within me! What else could I sell? Had I missed my calling as a boutique owner? Have all these years toiling at teaching been wasted?

No, of course not. But this proves my point that there is a huge demand for quality items at reasonable prices here, and it encouraged me to go forth with the rest of our sale. Pretty soon I had photographed almost everything in our apartment, and created a garage sale slideshow.  Everything from furniture and kitchen appliances to linens, rugs, small homegoods, and the much coveted floor and table lamps. Once again I was virtually sold out within days. I could have sold the lamps five times over for the amount of inquiries I received. Next time you make a visit to Ecuador, consider bringing a suitcase full of lamps with you. You could probably fetch a resale value of 200%. Lamps. Who knew?

I have to admit, at first the thought of parting with all my “things” was a little scary. Thoughts such as, “Will I ever find a blanket that snuggly again?” and “I happen to really prefer this particular spatula” cross one’s mind. But the fact that we are relocating into a fully furnished apartment made the break-up easier. After all, it’s all just stuff, right? And once I was able to realize that, I had a light, care-free feeling that I wouldn’t have to be hauling a bunch of literal extra baggage halfway across the world.

There’s soon to be another closet purge, and I’ve already been asked by a few people when they can expect the next batch of clothes to be released. I can’t wait to see what I can actually get myself down to. Four suitcases? Three? Stay tuned.