How to Do a Successful Garage Sale
A successful garage sale provides an enjoyable way to get rid of clutter and make some extra money for your efforts. The right preparations go a long way toward ensuring that your work results in a pleasant time and cash in your pocket. Remember that an item you consider worthless may be someone else's treasure. Does this Spark an idea?
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Things You'll Need
- Self-adhesive labels
- Card tables or other lightweight tables
- Neon-colored garage sale signs
- Sturdy adhesive tape
- Black permanent markers
- Helium balloons
Instructions
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Contact your city or town hall to see if a permit is necessary to host a garage sale. If so, they typically are inexpensive. The office personnel can also tell you what types of signs are permitted and where you can post them.
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Look around your house, garage and storage areas for items that clutter your home or objects you no longer use. Furniture, exercise equipment, kitchen items, toys and games all sell well at garage or yard sales. If you no longer use an item, designate it for the garage sale. Even items such as canning jars, old gardening tools, inexpensive baskets and home decor sell at garage sales.
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Pick a date for your sale. Any non-holiday weekend with pleasant weather works for a garage sale. Even if it rains, die-hard customers will come out to your garage if you're advertising something they desire. Clean out your garage to allow plenty of room to set tables inside if it does rain.
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Purchase an advertisement in your local newspaper or a website to alert buyers of your sale. List your higher priced or rare items and brand name merchandise first in the ad to attract attention to the sale. Items such as furniture, baby beds and other baby equipment,, plus rare collectibles, draw a lot of attention to your sale. Include the address, the starting and ending times, and the date in the ad. Run the ad one week before and the day of the sale.
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Price your items so there is a bit of room for the buyers to negotiate. Many avid garage sale customers enjoy trying to get the prices down. Keep this in mind so you have a little wiggle room. On the other hand, don't price items so high that the buyer walks off without even considering a purchase.
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Stick brightly colored, self-adhesive labels on the items. Put a price on each label, as many people won't ask about the price, they'll just leave. If you're hosting a garage sale with others, place your initials on the label as well so the person who takes the customer's money knows which seller should receive the cash.
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Attract customers to your garage sale by asking other people in your neighborhood or friends and relatives to join you. Advertise it as a multi-family sale. Many people prefer to travel to a multi-family sale because the chances of finding a treasure increase with the amount of items for sale. This is also a wise way to split the cost of any signs and advertisements.
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Post your signs and the stakes you attach them to with sturdy tape at major intersections or cross streets near your home. Check to ensure this is permitted in your area. Use neon-colored signs with bold, clear letters you draw with a black permanent marker. Add the street address, an arrow pointing the customers in the right direction and the date. Attach helium balloons to the signs and your mailbox to enable the potential buyers to locate your house easily.
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Add signs to community center and grocery stores bulletin boards as well. The more people that are aware of the sale, the more traffic you'll have.
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Open your garage doors at the stated time and not before. Many early birds arrive as much as an hour before the sale starts to try to nab the best items. Although any sale is welcome, once the doors are open and passers-by see cars at your home they'll stop as well. If you're not totally ready, this may cause chaos and get your day off to a bad start.
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Tips & Warnings
Attend a few garage sales before you host one. This is a wise way to familiarize yourself with the going rate on items. If you're uncertain about the value of an item, look it up on online auction sites or research the prices on collectibles and rare items at a library or bookstore. This prevents you from selling something of great value for a low price.
If your garage sale is half over and you haven't sold as many items as you'd like, post a big sign in your yard that states, "All items half-priced" or something similar. This prevents you from having to haul all the items back into your home.
Ask a friend or relative who lives in a nicer neighborhood or one with more traffic if she will join you in a garage sale and host it at her house. Location is very important and many buyers travel to better neighborhoods thinking the merchandise is more valuable.
Remove any signs after the garage sale is over to prevent littering your neighborhood. This also prevents strangers from knocking on your door hours after the sale is over.
References
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