This is the time of year when everyone is talking about Spring Cleaning. One of the best ways to clean up your space is to get rid of old stuff–and you can do that by having a garage sale. Here are some tips to having a successful garage sale, so that you can turn some of your old stuff into cold hard cash.
1.) Get everything you want to sell together and price it ahead of time. You can buy a pack of colored dot stickers at walmart for pretty cheap. Then price stuff to move. The key here is to move volume. If you are expecting to get retail prices for certain items, let me stop you–you won’t. People go to garage sales to get good deals, not pay retail price for your old junk.
2.) Make signs to put on busy intersections near your house to let people know you will be having a garage sale.
3.)Post an add on Craigslist for free to let everyone know the when and where of your garage sale. Very important–I have found that 8am-12pm is the best time to have your garage sale–that’s when you will get the most traffic. Don’t waste your time by being open until 5pm–no one will be there!
4.) Have at least 20-50 dollars in change to start out (quarters, dollars and 5 dollar bills). After you make a few sales, your cash drawer should start to get pretty well stocked.
5.) People will want to negotiate, so know what your bottom line will be ahead of time (especially on the bigger items). Sometimes you just want to get rid of an item, so take all offers if that is the case.
6.) Once you close your sale (at noon), you will have time to either go to goodwill to donate the unsold items, or pack them away for another sale. Then you have the rest of the day to spend with your family.
I hope this helps you with your garage sale this year–please feel free to comment if you have any other ideas on how to have a successful garage sale!
