Tips for An Awesome Garage Sale

The title is a wee bit of a spoiler, so I’ll just go ahead and tell you that our two-family garage sale on Saturday was BANANAS. It was so nice to unload all of the stuff we weren’t using anymore–plus our share of the profit was $210 (holla!), which isn’t bad at all for six hours of hangin’ outside on a pleasant day. This was our first garage sale ever and I was paranoid that it would be a flop, so I ended up doing a lot of planning. Probably too much, but I’m still going to call it a win since we got a cool $200 out of it. Here are the top three things we did and plan to do in the future the next time we need to purge.

1. Join forces. We teamed up with another couple for the sale and it was a good plan for several reasons. One, I got to chill with my friend all day, which is always delightful, but the MAIN idea behind the collaboration was to have a bigger variety of stuff to sell. Neither of us felt like we had enough for a good sale on our own, but together it was an epic driveway full of goodies:

This meant we had more categories of stuff to mention while promoting (more on that in a second), and we also weren’t competing with each other for a shopper’s love. The Hubster and I had books, movies, craft supplies, and furniture, while my friend brought fabric, scrapbooking supplies, classroom materials, and clothes. We overlapped for home decor and holiday decorations, but that’s it.

2. Have some big ticket items. Granted, when we’re speaking in garage sale terms “big ticket” means $20-$30, but still make sure you have a few of those to unload. The most expensive things I sold were the dining table and stools from our old condo (only two years after we moved!) and the Prismacolor markers and pencils I had to get for design school (and haven’t used in over a year–are you noticing a pattern with me?). Both sold for $30, so that’s $60 right off the bat.

3. Cross-promote. I did put a few signs up in our neighborhood, but most of the advertising was on Craigslist. I made an ad for the garage and moving sale section, which had a list of what we’d be selling and pictures of the big ticket items. Then I made separate ads in the furniture section for the dining set, a bookshelf, etc., and I made sure to include a link to the garage sale listing in all of those. When people emailed saying they wanted to buy something, I told them to just pick it up at the garage sale. Obviously that was most convenient because everything would already be outside, but I was secretly hoping those people would be dazzled by our wares and end up buying extra stuff. And you know what? THEY DID! High-five!

BONUS: It’s time-consuming. This is where I really felt like a newbie. Literally all parts of this took longer than we thought. Sorting our stuff into keep and sell piles, tagging everything, setting up that morning, taking leftovers to GoodWill (it didn’t fit in the car for one trip–ugh!). I wouldn’t say it necessarily follows the DIY adage of taking twice as long as you expect, but leave some wiggle room. And then go have some wine when you’re done.

Did you host a garage sale this summer? Any tips to share with the class? What’s the best deal you’ve scored at a sale?

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