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Planning for a Yard or Garage Sale

You have been reading through TipKing about how to organize and de-clutter your house, but what do you do with all of that stuff you really don’t need anymore? You can sell it at your own yard sale, at a flea market or have a garage sale – and make money while doing it! 

In many areas of the world, yard sales and garage sales are very prevalent and a great way to find goodies for your house or to clean out the house. Here I am going to tell you all about pricing for the yard sale, moving things at a yard sale, letting ‘it’ go and more. 

Just a quick review here: where are you going to find the stuff that you are going to sell and make money with? Anything and everything in your house that the children have outgrown and this includes toys, clothes, books and movies, even bikes, furniture and such. Everything that is in your house that you haven’t used in two years should ‘go’. No sense in keeping it around if you aren’t going to use it, all that stuff is just clutter and taking up your space. 

You can start collecting for your yard sale anytime during the winter or spring when you are cleaning out the house. Take a corner of the basement or the garage and put everything that you don’t want. Do this for a few weeks, and every time you get in a closet or pull out something from the toy room, you are bound to find something ‘new’ that really belongs in the yard sale pile. 

After you have made quite a pile of goodies for your sale, you can go through and throw out anything that you think is totally too dirty or old to sell. Keep in mind though the old saying that one person’s junk is another treasure; so don’t throw out too much stuff. 

Setting a date for your sale is going to be a little tricky. You need to know what the weather is going to be like. A nice sunny day is going to be the best possible situation, but if it is cloudy or happens to rain, you can still make a good deal of cash if you are in a good location. 

That brings us to the location – which is important. Living out in the country, you may find it a little more difficult to bring traffic to your yard sale, but if you live in town or in the city you know you are going to be able to get traffic and buyers to your yard sale. If you live in the country, you could borrow a friends garage or front yard and have a great time having a yard sale. Join in with others at a flea market, or have a few families have a yard sale at the same time – this brings in lots of people. 

Setting the prices – you have to think about what you are going to charge for things. Just because you spent $50 on that blanket five years ago, you are not going to be able to get that now, but you most likely could get an easy $5! You can sell just about anything in the house that is mobile and that include appliances as well. 

Who buys all this stuff? Everyone is on a budget anymore and everyone is going to buy something. People that come to your sale could be just starting out with their first apartment, helping their children get a place set up, they could be expanding in their family or they may just want some new goodies for their collection or their home. 

If someone wants to talk you down in prices, let them talk you down a little. You don’t want to have to cart all that stuff back in the house, and making a few dollars is better than having all this ‘stuff’ put back in your house to clutter it up. Of course, you can’t take just a dollar for a television but you can let yourself be talked down a dollar to fifteen dollars if you want to increase the money you have at the end of the day. 

Remember to have fun while out selling all your house wares – just think about the money you are making and what else you can buy!