Garage Sale Tips!

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I don't know about where you live, but it's definitely garage sale season around these parts! We've already been to a small handful of them and scored some sweet deals-- including E's awesome nightstand.

And it's about time that we complete the recycle and re-use circle by participating in our annual neighborhood sale this weekend. Our friends across the street are leading it up this year and I've volunteered to help get the advertising/sign-age going. And thanks to all the wonderful, experienced DIY bloggers, I've come across some helpful tips to making this year another success. 

All Things Thrifty has some great advertising tips.

Centsational Girl also has some fabulous tips along with a link party.

Real Simple has a great article on the topic.

Other helpful posts I found here, and here.

Things we plan to try this year:

-BIG and consistent COLOR sign-age: keep it all one color, and use poster board size on high traffic streets. Both cross streets to ours are high traffic which will be super helpful in bringing people in.

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-Staging/Styling: Try to be visually appealing when grouping items together. We're selling some desks, a rug, lamps, and other household decor/furniture items so taking the extra effort in staging them will make them more appealing to customers.

-De-clutter in advance: Set aside time AHEAD of time to go through your house. Really ask yourself if you need/use these items. Once they're in the garage, waiting for the sale...they stay there!

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-Have a free bin: Especially great for customers who have little ones, and it encourages them to stick around just a little bit longer. ;)

-Set up early and don't turn people away: I think we may set up the garage the night before to get a head start on those early birds. I'd rather a sale with the discomfort of an early bird than have an extra load to haul away. We noticed that the majority sales happened before 10am anyway.

 

I noticed that many said to price out every item while other said only the larger pieces. I think we may compromise and have a few tables out labeled a $1 or $5 so we don't have to price each item. Plus, as the day goes on, the lower prices will fall.

 

We learned a few years ago that the sale is better than getting a good price. We low-balled most of our items and had very few piece left to lug to Goodwill or the dump. That for us was a huge success! W & I found that we value the peace of mind and extra space rather than making a huge profit from the day.

 

Any tips/advice you've found helpful??