My Yard Sale: What I Would Change, and What I Would Keep the Same




I am by no means an expert in yard sales. I often see posts on Pinterest about "How to Have the Best Yard Sale in the World and Make $10,000 in One Day!!!". This is not one of those posts.

As some of you may know, I recently moved back into my parents house. My bedroom was more or less exactly the way I had left it when I graduated high school and moved into my college dorm. There was tons of stuff in there that I hadn't touched in four or more years, plus I had tons of new stuff that I'd acquired in that time that needed a home. I figured my best bet for getting rid of all of that stuff, and making some extra money, was a yard sale.

My parents and sister contributed some stuff and after two days of yard sales we had made a little over $100 between all of us. For some people, that may not be worth your time, but for me, I didn't mind sitting out front for two days and it was nice to earn a little extra cash.





Things I Would Keep the Same: 

1. Cleaning out my room
To be honest, I didn't care about making money nearly as much as I cared about going through all of the junk in my room. I cleaned out my entire closet, all of my drawers, over half the books on my bookshelf that were from when I was a kid, and even cleaned out all of the bags and boxes shoved under my bed. I was shocked at how much stuff can come out of a 12x16 room. And in the end, this goal was totally met, because I got rid of a lot of this stuff!



2. Have someone with you
I am so grateful that my sister decided to hang outside with me for two days straight because otherwise this could have been the most boring weekend of my life. Even though we had a decent amount of people visit the yard sale, there were still hours that were pretty quiet, so I'm glad my sister was there to talk to. It was also helpful to have her there so she could sit with the money box while I talked to customers and I didn't have to wear the money in a fanny pack or anything.



3. Give discounts for buying more things
I priced mostly everything that I had out as "1 for __ or 3 for ___". I had all of the prices labeled out on big sheets of paper next to the items so that there wasn't constant questions. In the end, I think this worked out fabulously, because so many people decided to buy the three of something rather than just one, in order to get the discount. It also seemed to drastically reduce the amount of people who haggled (only two people tried to haggle the whole time!) and I ended up selling a lot more clothes and jewelry this way than I think I would have otherwise.


Things I Would Change: 

1. List it on Craigslist
Since I live in my parents house now, I had to ask their permission for basically every step of this yard sale, including how I advertised it. Even though I knew that posting on Craigslist would dramatically increase the amount of people who came to the yard sale my dad was adamant that we shouldn't post it on there. So I definitely think that was a big factor in how much we ended up selling.



2. Have big furniture pieces to catch peoples eye
The first day we had two bikes for sale down by the curb, and a bunch of people were stopping to look at them. However, they sold that first day, so the second day we were pretty much lacking anything big and noticeable. I think that in the future I would try to have more big objects, just to catch people's attention as they're driving past.

3. Check the temperature
By the end of the day on both days I was covered in sweat. Even though it seemed like a nice weekend, the temperature was in the 80's, and sitting out in the sun for hours was pretty brutal. I definitely wish that I had checked the temperature and maybe even waited a few weeks before having the yard sale, just so it wasn't so hot.

Unknown

My name is Liz and I'm a 22 year old with a B.S. in Wildlife Conservation. I love beer and fashion and exploring the outdoors, and am currently figuring out how to do all of the above on a post-grad budget.

1 comment:

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