Shuffle Saturday: Garage Sale Day!

Today was our neighborhood garage sale. Need I say more. I forgot how much work a garage sale can be. And I am totally frozen from being outside in the damp cold despite all the hot chocolate I have drank. Still, though it was successful for only half a day as we made over $300.

I wanted to take a few minutes to jot some things down on what worked and what did not work before I forget, especially since it had been a while since I did a garage sale.

What worked really well....

Our pricing system with initials worked well, since we had three families participating in our sale. We then took a notebook and just recorded the prices in the appropriate columns as sales were made. Also on the list of things that worked well - combining families together into one sale made for a more worthwhile stop for people on a cold, dreary morning.

Setting out everything throughout the week prior to the sale also took pressure off of Friday night and Saturday morning. Doing a little bit each day made the process much easier.

We got $75 worth of change in quarters, ones, fives, tens, and twenties. This amount was perhaps a little high but probably was about right, especially if it had been a nicer day with a little more traffic. We did end up making change for one family who brought a $100 bill.

We used some old political yard signs turned inside out for signage which did help people find us, as our townhome is way in the back of our development and our road is not really on the beaten path for most people. We had a fairly steady (but light) flow of people most of the morning, starting around 8:30 am.

What didn't work as well as I had hoped...

I think our ad that we took out in the newspaper drove a lot of traffic to us, but could have been worded a little more clearly. I had rubber stamps to sell and only mentioned "stamps" in the ad, and we ended up with a lot of people looking for collectible postage stamps. Oops. Also, we had a lot of baby clothes and toys that we thought would sell since they are in great shape - maybe we didn't play that up enough in the ad.

We had hoped for a little more participation from our neighbors, as we had advertised as a neighborhood sale. We did communicate with them and thought we had a couple more committed, but starting a little earlier and communicating a few more times may have helped us to get better overall participation.

Overall, we counted the day as a success. It was nice to be outside for the morning after a long winter, even if the weather wasn't perfect. We sold a lot of quality items that needed a new home and can now re-purpose those dollars into something that makes sense with where we are in our lives now. Good luck on your next garage sale, and I hope to see you at mine next year!