Garage Sale Test Revisited

A while back, I wrote about a metric that I apply when evaluating my work, and frankly, others work too. I call it the Garage Sale test. Slick photos in great light and beautiful spaces or clean white galleries are great marketing tools to help create the impression of beauty and value. If they didn’t, everything would get the craigslist treatment, photographed in exactly the spot where neglect or lack of consideration found it. Since the dawn of social media, nearly everyone has become an adept marketer to one degree or another, there’s a little Don Draper in all of us.

The garage sale test is simple. Would you pay $50 (probably $75 with inflation) for that thing you just made if you found it at a garage sale next to the plastic kids toys, the mismatched tupperware and the exercise equipment?

There’s quite a difference between the jaundiced eye with which one contemplates the items at a garage sale and the objects one invests themselves in enough to bring to life. On that lawn, you know that somebody just wants to get rid of it. Even if the item at the garage sale is worth buying, how quickly do you start to devalue it for bargaining with the seller?

This might sound silly, after all, that thing you made cost a bundle in materials and took weeks and a bunch of expensive tools to complete. But to assume that this stirs a commensurate response in the viewer is like saying that poems with more words are inherently better. The question remains, if you had no information about the thing but encountered it in the wild, how would you value it? Would you part with thousands to own it yourself? I’ve found it to be a hard lens to view my own work through, even when I reduce the price to $50.

The trouble with making something is that you know what it cost in time, materials and effort. In the first stages of creating something, it’s essential to envision the impact of it’s existence, otherwise you’d never prioritize it over all the other things in your life calling for your attention. You’re already in love with this thing, be it in the challenge of the process, or the expectations of it’s beauty and utility.

I think it’s also helpful to consider what you’re making in a world full of storage units. All those objects are valued by someone, often just enough to pay a monthly rent to ensure their safety, even though it would probably be tough to justify if the contents were sold on the open market.

The reason I want to revisit this idea, is to explore the opposite. What is it that makes you screech to a stop and rush to an object on a lawn, knowing full well that you will pay whatever it takes to get it in the trunk.

This all came to mind after I moved my beloved butcher block into my new kitchen. I bought 25 years ago after spotting it in a dingy corner of architectural salvage company. Pretty sure I paid around $200 for it. I’ve moved this 5 cubic feet of hard maple at least 8 times. As I scraped away the grime acquired during it’s time in my barn (I’m just getting to the bottom of that grime on myself), I saw it start to glow and my long term love of this thing came flooding back.

It got me thinking about the items that I value and why. The joy I get from the butcher block is a daily experience. There is a special feeling when I set anything on it, the sound is surprisingly light because of it’s density. I can’t imagine a dollar amount that would have me happy to watch you drive away with this hunk of wood.

This might seem an esoteric exercise in a craft full of direct solutions to practical needs, but I still think it’s a worthy one. The world is full of stuff, I don’t want to carelessly add to the glut. My goal is to make objects I’m passionate about that can hold their own regardless of the setting. There are many ways to achieve this. The utility, the design, the display of craftsmanship and the comfort (a personal fav) are all avenues to connect with the viewer. The garage sale test helps me to inhabit both sides of the equation, and hopefully nudge them a bit closer.