Garage sale season is upon us! If you’re planning an upcoming move, organizing a garage sale can help reduce the amount of items that you will be taking with you, as well as offering a way to make some extra spending money. To help you, we’ve gathered our top tips for throwing a great garage sale.
Garage Sale Tips
Set a Date
Choosing a date early on helps keep you to a timeline, but is also important as you don’t want there to be any events that might conflict with your sale. There are often many holidays or community events during the summer that may make your neighbourhood a ghost town.
Before setting a date, it’s also worthwhile to see if your neighbourhood or building holds an annual community garage/yard sale. They tend to generate a much larger crowd, providing you with greater visibility, and will usually offer you a better opportunity to get rid of your items.
Get the Word Out!
It’s very important to create some buzz to market your sale before the actual day. How will people know where to go?
Many people have begun posting to Facebook on community garage sale pages in their area, as well as their city or town’s Facebook page. It is also worthwhile to look into how much an ad is to run in your local paper. Our advice is to keep whatever you say as simple as possible, as you often don’t have too much room and you want to be as direct as possible. Descriptions such as “women’s clothes, baby clothes and toys, antiques, furniture, tools.” are perfect for a small little ad.
Set-up Properly
How you set up your items can be a big factor in how well you sell your items. People are more willing to stop by if you have items nicely organized and clearly defined. Organize a section for clothes, a section for movies and electronics, and a section for any large furniture; you get the idea. Those who come to your garage sale will appreciate the work you’ve put in to organize everything.
It’s also important to keep all of your items organized throughout the day. There will no doubt be moments where you will draw a larger crowd, which may result in items being moved or clothes being tossed around.
Pricing
We recommend that you price all of your items with the intention to sell. Go with “easy-to-pay-for” prices. What we mean by this is to tag your items at .50 cents, $1, $5, and so on. Not $.30 cents or $1.70.
Before your sale, make sure to pick up lots of stickers or price tags for each of your items. You’ll find that throughout your sale, that some items will go quickly and others may need their price to be reduced.
Family and Friends
As mentioned before, it can be sometimes easier to do a garage sale if you have a larger group to do it with. Generally, the greater variety you have, the greater amount of interest you will get from customers. Chances are your family or friends have accumulated a bunch of unused items as well. Keep items separated when selling by putting that family member or friend’s initials on the price tag. Keep a notepad at your cash table with columns for each seller to jot down who has made what.
Donate what’s left
Pack up the items you are left with at the end of the weekend and donate them to a shelter or organization in your community. If you are in need of cardboard boxes for your donation items, visit your local TWO MEN AND A TRUCK® to choose from a variety of sizes.
If you have more garage sale tips, we’d love to share them. Reach out to us in the comments below or on Facebook, Twitter or Instagram.