It’s that time of year – garage sale season. City-wides, anyone? Set your alarms!

While some find no value in digging through another person’s junk, there are others who spend half of their summer mapping out sales and hunting for deals.

For a period of time (before my family collected enough rubbish to occupy nearly one third of the basement), garage sales were a regular Saturday morning ritual.

We weren’t the only ones. My friend Matt told me stories of his garage sale prowling mother. Anyone who placed an ad containing their address became a victim. Matt, a few of his siblings and his mother would go for a “drive” on Friday nights. They wouldn’t travel far before his mother would pull over and ask the kids to get out, knock on the door and ask the residents if a “sneak preview” of the sale would be allowed

While we never went to that extreme, my family rarely failed to bring home less than a trunk full of cast-offs – most of which we rarely (if ever) used.

We didn’t need anything, but Mom and Dad enjoyed sifting through boring stuff like glasses and mugs, earning the family an overflowing cupboard of unique cups, mugs and glasses – no two alike. I had a good chance at finding a Boxcar Children book or scoring a new game for our original Nintendo. I especially loved looking at the 80’s-style prom dresses and dreaming of the day I would get to wear a pretty dress and attend the prom with one of my many crushes. Even the sales that had nothing for a young gal usually had a dog to play with or a trampoline to jump on. It was basically free reign to the seller’s entire yard.

That was a few years ago. Now I find garage saling more of a time-wasting, frustrating, do-when-you’re-desperate activity.

First of all, more often than not, the “HUGE SALE!” signs lead you to a lifeless street of homes with closed garage doors. Trying to find the supposedly huge six-family sale, patience begins to fizzle. Eventually the balloons and neon signs guide you to a driveway of a sale which was apparently over several weeks ago.

Sometimes I wonder if someone doesn’t spend an evening writing up signs, inflating balloons and placing them on the main streets of Fargo to see how many people they can sidetrack and lead to nowhere. If I ever catch that person, I vow to ruin their life.

It may be possible to get so caught up with trying to sell stuff that people just forget to take the signs down. Now, I’ve never hosted a garage sale, so maybe I’m out of the loop, but in order to prevent strangers from showing up at your doorstep and asking where the sale is, or to avoid creepers slowly driving by gazing at your home, wouldn’t you take the signs down when the sale was over? If not for yourself, for sale seekers’ sake. I mean – fruitless signs make people delirious. “Is that a sale?” lurkers wonder as they slowly roll past an open garage containing a man working on a lawn mower. Judging by the way he returns the gaze, it’s not a rummage sale.

Maybe people are just getting lazy. In addition to the placebo signs, people have stopped pricing their stuff. “Make an offer” signs mess with a buyer’s mind. You don’t want to empty your pockets at the first sale, but being a cheapskate and low-balling could be really offensive. Imagine the tears in the little girl’s eyes when you offer her pocket change for her “bracelet.” How are you supposed to know she spent four hours creating something that looks like a few yards of tangled yarn? This is why it’s best for sellers to price their stuff.

And so, the interior of my family’s home is no place for Martha Stewart – things are a little mismatched. We have coats with random names embroidered on them. We have hats featuring logos of businesses we’ve never heard of. Our fireplace mantle consists of at least five mismatched candle holders. Dad (and Dad only) has taken a liking to collecting ugly green glassware and placing pieces throughout every room in the house. Cupboards are so full of glasses, it’s a health hazard to open it up, the ab roller has never been used, and the décor hanging from the walls doesn’t go with anything else in the entire house.

Come to think of it, the inside of the house somewhat resembles a garage sale. Odd how that is…

Shootin’ the Wit is a weekly column about everyday life that should never, ever be taken too seriously.