The area's largest garage sale, held every two years by the Browncroft Neighborhood Association, returns this weekend for scroungers and savers.

"We expect more than 200 sales in a square mile," says Sharon Bloemendaal, in charge of publicity for the 2007 Biennial Browncroft Garage Sale. Quentin Road alone, she notes, has sales at 11 of its 24 houses. One year, "I counted 20 people in my front yard at one time," says Bloemendaal.

Items being sold at each sale - and which days each home will be having a sale - are listed in advance on the neighborhood association's Web site. Some sales start as early as Friday.

The Browncroft sale is as busy as the Corn Hill Arts Festival, says Bloemendaal, but this sale offers affordable, pre-owned treasures. "People plan trips from hundreds of miles away to coincide with this event."

Bloemendaal, for instance, is selling loads of fabric and a circa-1860s melodeon (like a pump organ). Other items for sale include antique dressers, lawn equipment, costume jewelry, baby furniture and equipment, tapes of old radio programs and musical instruments.

Park your car outside the neighborhood, then bring your strollers or bikes for easier movement, advises Bloemendaal. Want an item that's too unwieldy? Put a deposit on it, she says, and come back for it later. Since the initial sale in 1981, some folks have also admired the flowering cherry and forsythia, and the 1920s elegant homes. Many also enjoy the festive atmosphere.

"It's a happening, a fair, a festival - celebrating the hunt for treasures," says Bloemendaal, "and it's a lovely neighborhood for a walk."

[News Source]