Parker and I held our first garage sale this weekend. Not our first in this house but our first, ever. We had done some research about how to throw the proper garage sale event and we think the advice we found was super helpful. We thought we would tell you all about the sale and throw in some words of wisdom we learned from our experience.
First off, the whole thing was a huge success. We made a huge amount of money (but I am going to make you read this whole post before I tell you our final number)! We had several great stories from the day, and we met some of our neighbors which was super nice considering we had yet to even really see anyone outside of their houses. Thank goodness they are all super nice!
So here is the lowdown on how we had such a great garage sale experience:
The week before I advertised our garage sale on Craigslist.org 2 or 3 times. This was what I think was a huge factor in our success. We had people waiting for us as we were setting up our tables at 7am! We advertised starting at 8! By the time 7:45 rolled around we were already out of most of our electronics and "good stuff". I know no to get to garage sales early and act fast. We also advertised on the street with large bright readable signs so people would know where to head.
Here is a picture of parker an hour or so into it. Imagine about twice the amount of stuff out there to start off! You can see him waving at me if you squint!
We spread out. We used lots of tables and looked like we had a lot of stuff. We also kept putting new stuff out and arranging items to everything was easy to see and look at. I think this made us look "professional".
We did not set out trying to make money. The agreement was we were not there to make money, but to clean out all of our extra stuff and crate some space in our garage. This was our motto when people would negotiate us down. We figured 5 bucks was less than 10 but at least is was no ZERO!
We did not bring anything back into the house that we put out for sale. Not one thing we put out went back into the house. This was a huge feet for both of us but we really did feel great clearing out everything from our garage.
We did not take anything personally. We never got upset or concerned when someone did not want our stuff. The funny thing is stuff that Parker and I thought would go right away, never sold and all the weird odd and end stuff was gone right away!
At the end of the day this is all we were left with! Two tables full of little odd things and some old books. Oh and that bookcase sold to a former school teacher for $5!
Speaking of odd things we thought would sell, our sofa did not sell all day! We were so ticked by this! We thought that would be a big money maker for us and we had no takers. At 1:00 we were about to start packing up and a guy came by and asked if it was available. Parker jumped at the opportunity to not have to bring that sofa back into the garage and wait for Salvation Army to come by and get it and said we would sell it for $25! That guy got a STEAL!!!! Best part was right after the first guy offered to buy it these other guys pulled up in their burnt orange longhorn tuck. They wanted it too! We could have started a bidding war for it!
Guy number one was driving around in a BMW convertible and could not take the sofa right away. So he bartered with the buy in the truck and played him $25 to drive his sofa to his house! Not a bad deal for either of them. Here is Parker loading up the sofa:
I would also like to point out that I put out a few plates of my Chocolate Chip cookies and they sold like hotcakes! Hmmm maybe one day that could be my job!
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