Truth Yard Sale

What are some tips that will help my April Yard Sale to be as successful as possible?

I will be selling a ton of gently used baby items (as my baby grew out of them really fast)! Baby, men’s and women’s gently used clothing. Household items, DVDs, CDs, VHS, Books, etc. (Please keep in mind that none of this will be junk. This would all be stuff that I would be really excited and surprised to find at a yard sale! We make it a habit to take very good care of everything we have and before we just donate everything we want to try to earn a little $$ to put into a savings account for our son. I will also have some craft type home decor items for sale that I have personally made.

An ad in your local paper and easy to read signs to your house.

This time, I organized a NEIGHBORHOOD yard sale, to really bring the buyers in. About 1/2 of the families joined in…and everyone was independant, in their own yards.

Well in advance of our last yard sale in early December, my hubby collected signs left by political candidates, along the roadsides. I spray painted them all white, both sides, stapled plastic ‘Garage Sale‘ signs on them and stenciled 8 to 4 in huge #’s with arrows pointing the way from the highway….spacing them so drivers could easily follow the trail to our street. We put the signs out the night before the sale.

Each item was scrubbed, polished, sized and clearly priced….then I stored all ‘like’ items in ‘labeled’ plastic totes. For items like the Gazelle, I printed out a picture with the ‘latest advertised price’ and hung it on the machine, with the directions.

We have an ‘ez-up tent, so we set that up in the driveway and made wire mesh walls for 3 sides, to hang stuff up using drapery hooks. The night before, we set up all the card tables and folding tables we could find or borrow, and stuck them in the tent and garage.

Early that morning, we opened the tent, pulled the tables of stuff out onto the driveway and unloaded the totes onto the other tables.

We strung a rope between two trees and hung the clothes on it for easy viewing.

We had a couple of carpenters aprons, with the two pockets…and had plenty of change, singles, 5’s and 10’s…ready to make change.

We were out there (we’re in FL) at 7AM…and the people started coming by the carloads. We had Christmas music playing to get them ‘in a buying mood’ and greeted each person with a smile and a cheery, ‘Good Morning’ !!!

The ad we placed in our local paper was about $11.00, a brief listing of the items and ‘CLEAR DIRECTIONS’.

By the end of the day we had cleared over $1000.00, were totally exhausted and VERY happy.

I really feel that planning ahead and being very organized is the way to go…it really pays off in the end.

Good Luck!!!!! Helen