Craigslist - it's always an experience

Before we moved, we got rid of a lot of stuff. We brought carloads to Goodwill. We borrowed space in the trash cans of our neighbors for weeks in succession after overstuffing ours. We gave things away to friends and co-workers. An awful lot of our belongings didn't pass the Is it really worth schlepping 1,100 miles? test.

We also sold some items on Craigslist. Quite a number of things, actually. Which meant the phone rang a lot, and a procession of strangers came to the door and left with some of our belongings. (This didn't sit too well with our dogs, but that's another story.)

The thing about Craigslist is it's a bit of a mixed bag. Some have been great, like making new friends. We had one situation where two people arrived simultaneously, looking to buy two separate items. The man called about the five bags of lime Amy listed for $5 - a great deal. The woman was interested in an area rug. The man was late, the woman early so we had to split up. The man berated Scott for not wearing shoes, complained that our driveway was too long, and ended up backing his pickup onto our lawn. Then he glanced around the garage and asked if we were selling anything else and called Amy indecisive when she wasn't willing to commit to the sale of a digging fork. Meanwhile, the woman was in and out of the house bringing throw pillows, dithering about color and pattern matching (not Scott's strengths), and trying to decide if the room (in a house in Vermont) would look too busy. In the end, she did not buy the carpet, and Scott flipped the bird to (the back of) the man as he left.

Here in St. Louis, we've been on the buying end of most transactions and there have been some strange encounters as well. We called a guy about a grill and met him at the address he designated. We then followed him from that house to another one, a few miles away, where he showed us a grill that was outside under a car port. It didn't appear as though anyone was home. He claimed his boss had given him the grill and he had decided to sell it. We weren't buying it, literally or figuratively.

All of this was found -separately - on Craigslist!

In general, though, we're glad Craigslist is around (though given the recent sex ad revenue loss, one wonders whether they'll stay in business). Because where else can you have this much fun while furnishing a house?