Yard Sale Time!
Flickr by John Beagle
Spring can be a great time to help your favorite senior citizens begin to clear out clutter in their homes. A yard sale can be a great way to get rid of the items that they are no longer using. They may even make a little extra money along the way.
The Motley Fool, a website about stocks, investing, and personal finance points out that those looking to invest an extra $1,000 or so are often able to come up with the cash by selling items in their own homes. According to the Motley Fool, “You’ll gain not only money, but also a less-cluttered home.”
The Motley Foot recommends selling items on eBay, Half.com, Amazon or by having a yard sale. A 2005 article on their site provides readers with hints for having a successful garage sale. Their yard sale hints come from their community members who are also veterans of yard sales.
When it came time for me to clean out my Mom’s house I used a variety of approaches to selling her items (e.g., two yard sales, eBay, the newspaper, Amazon, a consignment shop, etc.)
I do have a few suggestions for yard sales based on my limited experiences:
- Schedule the sale in the spring once the weather begins to warm up but well before vacation season. This way people will have the time to attend and will more than likely be in town. I had mine at the end of April and the beginning of May. We had great turn outs.
- Schedule the sale on a weekend when there aren’t many other sales scheduled in your area (e.g., you can check your local newspaper’s on/offline classifieds).
- Organize your garage sale by departments (e.g., holiday items, sporting goods, kitchen items, clothing, etc). It will make it easier for people to find specific items they might have stopped by to find.
- If you don’t want people shopping early, put sawhorse barricades up across your driveway with a sign letting them know the time that you will be open and that there will be no “early bird” sales.
- Make sure that everyone who will be helping you arrives prior to the start of the sale. There is often a crowd at the start and then the number of customers typically dwindles as the day goes on.
- Make sure you have plenty of change on hand.
- Secure your profits as the day goes on (inside your home, if possible).
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Laura,
Great tips on the yard sale. We all could use them. I think that one of the most important things we did for your Mom’s sale, was the signage. It’s really important to capture people on main thoroughfares and then guide them to the sales. Advertising works. sl