Garage Sale Madness!!!!
On Saturday we participated in our HOA's community garage sale. Basically our HOA took care of getting permits for everyone who wanted to have a garage sale and they put up signs at the entrances of our neighborhood. Despite the freezing cold, we had a great turnout! We had quite a few larger items to get rid of but hardly any smaller things, so my sister volunteered to clean out her stuff and brought us over boxes and boxes of clothes and little knick knacks. Even with the freezing wind, we had a great turnout! We pretty much got cleaned out and only had to take 1/3 full truck (mostly with clothes and a few toys) over to Goodwill. Things were CRAZY right at 8:00am when we opened - I have never seen such garage sale madness. We sold our stereo right off the bat and then quickly sold an old laptop and old tv. I thought this picture of Spencer was adorable - he really enjoyed hanging out in the garage and watching all the people stopping by. Spencer was a big hit, he could get anyone to smile! We strategically placed his pack n' play by the baby clothes - and we pretty much got rid of almost all of them! This was the first garage sale we'd ever done, but here are some things I learned:
1. Overprice the good stuff, because no matter how fair of a price it is, people are going to try and bargain with you.
2. Carry the money you make with you instead of keeping it in a box. That way you can walk around and mingle or answer people's questions without worrying about money getting stolen. Also, don't accept checks - it's just too risky.
3. Have everything set up 1/2 an hour before the garage sale starts, because that's when people start coming, and that first hour is a MADHOUSE!
4. Have someone to help you watch your kids, or they are going to have to watch the Disney Channel for 4 hours straight. (Thanks Erin and Emily for coming to the rescue!!!!)
5. Take old books to Half Price Books (or another kind of book resale shop), you get LOTS more money for them than at a garage sale.
6. If you sale a large item such as furniture and the person has to come back to pick it up, tell them they have to pick it up by a certain hour - otherwise you could be waiting around all day (we learned this from personal experience).
Maybe in 5 more years when we've collected as much junk as we had in our first 5 years of marriage we'll do it again!
7 comments:
Hey. great tips. I am glad you guys did well. We were the only ones on our street that participated. We did get rid of most everything but a huge desk that Chris' mom brought over and a small box of stuff. Hope to get rid of it all by the weekend. I want to park in my garage!! You know, I should have put Hayden in the playpen too. I mostly stayed inside with him. I really didn't mind. I hate garage sales.
thanks for the advice. you sound like an old pro. we've yet to have a sale, we just give everything away. I wonder how much we could have got over the years. I'll have to add it up in my mind...no, then i'd be sad. oh well, maybe in 5 years we can do it too.
I'm glad it was a success. We aren't a part of an HOA, but some of our neighborhood is and most of our ward is and I look forward to going out to BUY stuff, not sell it. :) (we don't really have anything to sell right now anyway).
Good tips - we are actually having a garage sale this weekend! I hope ours is as good as yours!
Spencer looks so cute, what a great sales tactic! Cute babies=more sales!
Ezra saw this picture of Spencer and got all excited. He said, "who is that?" I said, "Spencer." He says, "Oh! Spensper!" I thought it was pretty funny.
Ginger- Awww...that's so cute! I'll bet Spencer would love Ezra. He loves to be around little boys.
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