Yard Sale Success!

As part of Mission: Organization (see more on that here and here) I decided we needed to have a yard sale. Usually I'm too lazy, or maybe just too busy, to hassle with a yard sale but I decided we had enough nice stuff to give it a whirl. I blindly picked a date where we'd be available and penciled penned it in. September 8 it was!  Note: on that day, I learned that there was a noon USC football game. If you are from here, you know that that all life stops around football season. Seriously, businesses will shut down early if the game is early. So I was a little afraid that we'd not have much success.

The week before, I roped my husband in to helping me pull everything down in the attic. Actually, I pulled it down, he was at the bottom of the stairs since I being the control freak that I am, wanted to go through all the attic stuff to decide what stayed and went. He would have just tossed it all down to sell, and possibly thrown in a kid or pug to the pile. We borrowed three 6ft tables and put them up in our living room. Yep, that's right, we could have auditioned for Hoarders and probably been accepted.

 

 

 

 

 

 

This is how we lived for the week. Surprisingly the kiddos didn't really mess with it all that much. I think it was a little too overwhelming! My fabulous friend, Jenna, came over and helped me price everything one night. Can't tell you how much more fun it is to price things with a fun friend than sorting through it yourself. Cherry. Life. Saver.

 

I didn't do much advertising other than listing it on Craigslist the Monday before and putting out signs the Thursday morning before. I did make a point to make my signs visible and interesting...what? You know I couldn't just be boring and say there's a yard sale Saturday!

 

I used blinding neon poster board and cut them in to 4 pieces. Then I just printed some signs - maybe 16 in toto. For those spots in our neighborhood that didn't have poles I could staple them to, I used wooden stakes you can buy at Lowe's or Home Depot. They were easy to just pound in to the ground with a hammer. We had lots of comments on the signs so they must have worked!

What really shocked me was that we had someone actually stop by the house and ask to shop early...as in 2 days early. Really!? I had already had someone inquire about the china (see this post) through Craigslist so she came and looked at our stuff early, but she scheduled it.

Then came the morning of the big sale...we got up at O-dark-thirty (5am that is) so we could start hauling. Being the sales person I am, I had to have things organized on the tables to show case the best stuff. And as I suspected, although the signs said 7am, people were shopping at 6:15am.

As Jenna predicted, the things I thought would sell fast, never sold. The things I thought people wouldn't want, were taken quickly (like an old stereo from the late '90's!). The biggest hits were my old jewelry and nail polishes. All the other decorative items for the home were just sort've hit or miss. Maybe that's because all my friends snatched up the good stuff in my pre-sale on Friday! Yep, you read that right. I held a pre-sale for friends per their request. That's where half the money was made!

As you can see, we were in the dark for a while until the sun came up. Those hard core people bring their flash lights! My biggest advice:

1. don't pay for advertising - there's plenty of free ways to advertise
2. make your own signs - they are easy to read, fairly quick to make and you save alot of money
3. price everything clearly
4. price everything fairly - think "what's the least I could take for this?" then mark it up just a smidge so people can haggle with you. Don't think how much you paid for it but rather how much you'd take for it just to get it out of your house.

In the end we stayed open until noon since people were still shopping. The majority of what we didn't sell was donated to local Christian charities/thrift stores. I did hold back a few things that I want to try on Craigslist and eBay. Just for fun.

Wondering how much we made? $529! I was super excited considering we only spent $12.98 on supplies:
 
$4.14 poster board
$3.84 pricing labels
$5 wooden stakes (and I didn't use most of them)

Our neighbors had a yard sale earlier this year and they only made $165. Of course we had a lot more stuff but still, that's huge profits in my book! And my sweet hubby agreed that I could use this to fund the fall wardrobe for our family...me... family. I have already bought some much needed plants for our planters, just in time for Cole's first birthday party this Saturday, as well as a new bird feeder and bird seed. OK granted, that's not a wardrobe but it was something we really wanted to do before the birthday party. And of course I've already asked my mom to bring me a pair of Tom's wedges from the beach I've been eyeing for months. Good things come to those who yard sale!

So don't be afraid of that yard sale! For me, the most fun was putting it all together and having it be so successful. The money is great, don't get me wrong, but the fun of selling and organizing a Fabulous Yard Sale is what floated my boat. Yep, I'm weird like that.

Who else yard sales? Next up - thrifting. Anyone game? I'm dying to go to a few thrift stores and find some tables I can repurpose or maybe even a chair for the living room.