Yard sales can be great fun for the entire family. You can get rid of the unwanted clutter in your house and bond over the experience of sharing an age-old institution.
A successful yard sale leaves you with money in your pockets and nearly empty tables.
9 yard sale tips:
- Frequency: At the most, you should have a yard sale once a quarter. You do not want to be known as the family who has a yard sale every single weekend, come rain or shine. That adds strain on your relationship with the neighbors. That schedule does not give you ample time to replenish your inventory. If you wish to have a yard sale every week, think about setting up a booth at a flea market.
- Planning: Start planning for your yard sale a month in advance. This will give you ample opportunity to collect the items within your house as well as coordinate with the rest of your neighborhood. Create a yard sale box and place items into it each time that you clean up the house. Let everyone within the family help you out with filling the box.
- Coordination: If possible, coordinate your yard sale with other families in the neighborhood. Have a cul-de-sac sale or a series of garage sales. The more families that are involved, the better. This increases the items that are available, making it more appealing for passers-by. If the neighbors do not want to participate, giving them the advanced notice will help them know when parking might be strained.
- Location: Look at the location where you want to hold your yard sale. If your street cannot handle having five or six cars lined up in front of your house, you might want to consider having your yard sale at the local church or community center. You can rent out space for a small fee as well as having the chance for multiple vendors. Since you are starting a month in advance, you can turn your sale into an event.
- Advertising: Once you have determined the day and location of your sale, you can work on the advertisement. Craigslist is an excellent way to promote your sale, as is the local newspaper. If this is a multi-family event, assign someone to make some signs. You want the signage to be consistent and simple. Make sure that all of you are aware of the rules for sign hanging in your area.<
- Weather: The week before your yard sale, make sure that the weather is going to be cooperative. Only hard core bargain hunters will want to buy things in the rain. Make sure that you have rain location or consider holding the yard sale the next week. A lot of your traffic will be from the road signs.
- Staging: A couple days before the sale, you want to start staging the items that you will be including. This includes pricing as well as making sure that there are no second thoughts about what you want to sell. You do not want to find out that the dusty jacket in the cellar was a piece of prized memorabilia from your husband’s college days at the last minute. Get everyone involved in the process.
- Pricing: Put clear pricing labels on your items. There is nothing so frustrating as to find something that you enjoy and not knowing how much it costs. For multiple little items, place them into a box where you can sell them all for the same price. If you are selling large items like furniture, you want to have signs large enough that people can see them and not be forced to look for the sticker.
- Money: Have $100 in change on hand so that you can make change for your visitors. Make sure that you have a roll of each coin as well as enough $1’s and $5’s. There is nothing so frustrating as to have to run to the store in the middle of a yard sale to make change for your customer.
Your yard sale success depends on proper planning.
If you throw something together the day before, you won’t attract many visitors. You will have a spectacular yard sale if you involve the whole family.
About the author: James Adams blogs about technological developments and reviews newly released products similar to the HP Q6000A at one of the leading suppliers of toner cartridges based in the UK. Follow James on Twitter.
I’d like to thank James for writing the very 1st guest post on Simple Home Organization.
I never make anything at garage sales, and now I’m thinking it’s because I rush and throw it together in a week. My neighborhood does a group sale 2 times a year, so there is always great traffic.
Great tips, James!
I agree with you Melinda, James did a great job. I love his advice as in not being known as that neighbor who throws a garage sale every week. I have neighbors exactly like that, and they continue to tote the exact same stuff they didn’t sell from the prior week, into their driveway. These are some great tips.
I used to live near neighbors that did that constantly. No one wants a street full of traffic every weekend.
Ahh I love coordinating yard sales! Fortunately, we live in a cul de sac and once a year we try to coordinate a time with the entire street for a yard sale. It’s a great time for us to declutter as well as a great time for others to find things for a good deal. Definitely a fun thing to do! We might even do it semi-annually because last year was a pretty big success.
My neighborhood does it in the Spring and Fall which is great. If you miss one you still have another one just around the corner.
What a great tip list! My neighborhood has a community-wide yard-sale day about 2 times a year, which is great because they post an ad in the paper as well as online and put up the signs.
That is what we do. It really makes sense to get a huge amount of traffic. We used to pay $5 to help with advertising and they put out all the signs (worth it!), but now we are lucky that the HOA pays for it all now out of dues.
Great advice on how to properly hold a yard sale! It doesn’t happen in our neighborhood too often, but I like yard sales especially if there are cute stuff toys.