It was kind of crazy to see all the garage sale shoppers wandering around yesterday with the CapitolHillGarageSale.com map. Definitely gave us a nerdy thrill. Next year, we need to make a cooler — and easier to read! — map. Here’s a few more lessons we learned:

1. The independent sales part went great. Saw a lot of great stuff and good turnout at most locations. We’ll definitely do this part again next year.
2. West Seattle is a little touchy on the whole whose garage sale is bigger, thing. WS, yes yours is bigger. Ours was better looking, though.
3. Books fly off the shelf at 25 cent price point. Make a note, Amazon.
4. Paintings move with rapidity at $5 a pop. Make a note, struggling artist types.
5. Don’t try to mix running your own g-sale and neighborhood blogging. One side had to give on Saturday.
6. Don’t depend on a struggling arts organization in their final weeks of operation. Capitol Hill Arts Center — usually friendly and helpful if not highly organized — totally let us down by a) deciding to not have their sale at the last minute and, sigh, b) not showing up to let people hold the community-space sales. Granted b) was a small group but this was the lone sour note on what was mostly a really fun day. BTW, we’ve offered to try to make up for the lameness by running a post profiling the small businesses run by the people who were planning to be at CHAC so watch for that soon.
7. The area around the old Deano’s has a lot of involved residents. There was good turnout at the JC Mueller LLC event to talk about the redevelopment plans in the area. And a massive pile of Top Pot Donuts. Coincidence?
8. The people from the Northwest Center’s Big Blue Truck program are champs. They showed up just like they promised and collected some good stuff for people who need it.

Lessons learned, a great day had, and, happily, our basement and garage are empty and ready for us to collect more junk. As for the garage sale cash, we did ok — we’ll be giving The Service Board a check for $73.25.