What I didn’t know when moving to the Midwest is how much this region loves to rummage! I have never lived somewhere with so many garage, yard, church, tag, and rummage sales each weekend. In our city, most sales run Friday and Saturday, with a few starting on Thursday or running through Sunday. It’s a green mama’s dream come true, honestly.

I’ve had two “rummaging” strategies in my time here: Before Triplets (BT) and After Triplets (AT). I think they would be applicable to any WOHM vs WAHM/SAHM or someone trying to drive less in general. BT, I was working for a nonprofit a few miles from home and my older son was in daycare near my office. Fortunately, the distance between the two was through a nice semi-suburban community. I would frequently be leaving the office at 2 or 3pm on Friday and would snake my way through the town, stopping when I saw a sign on my way to one or more sales that I picked from craigslist. I would also look at where my meetings and lunches were on Thursday and Friday and see if I could throw any rummaging in without running over my lunch hour.

It was a bounty season last year: a like-new bike trailer that we use to take DS to daycare several times a week, one sale where I bought all of the 4T pants I’m ever going to need (Gap and Mini Boden, to boot), a Step 2 wagon and Little Tykes picnic table in perfect condition… Is it a bad sign that I still remember my bargains this fondly???

AT, of course, everything is different. Instead of a leafy ‘burb, I have the hit-or-miss sales of our city neighborhood. My strategy now is as follows:

• CL garage sales is part of my Google Reader. I don’t look at it all week, and then I open Reader in another window of my browser on Wednesday and start scanning for sales in my neighborhood. I open each of those in a separate tab. I also open a tab if there is a sale outside of our neighborhood listing something we really need.
• Babies willing, I make it to any of the Thursday or Friday sales.
• Friday afternoon or Saturday morning, I write down all of the sales I want to hit on Saturday and any open on Sunday, and then I rank them based on their ads (Baby clothes? Toys? Womens clothes in my still-postpartum size?) and their proximity to our house or our route to the farmer’s market.
• I’m lucky that my older son loves to go to sales, so he and I will grab a baby and go to as many as is feasible in our day. There are 7 on my list for today, 3 prioritized based on their ads/location, and I know we’ll see others that weren’t advertised on CL along our way that we will stop at.

Maybe I’ll take a photo of my bounty today, if it’s any good. I always bring a lot of cash with me, just in case, but find I rarely spend more than $10 across the weekend. No matter what, I only buy things we need because I have a stern anti-clutter policy in our house. But with growing triplets, we need a lot, especially in the realm of kids clothes!