1) Invite all of your neighbors to have sales on the same day, because that makes it more like a party, and you know how to throw parties. (And if your family gets sick and you don’t have time to sort through and purge all of your possessions, there will still be enough stuff in the general vicinity to make it worthwhile for customers.)
2) Use your Silhouette to make gorgeous signs to put around the neighborhood (that get destroyed in the wind before you can get a picture).
3) Spend most of your prep time making sure the kids have gorgeous cupcake to sell. And hot cocoa (and try for sugar cookies–but don’t get too grumpy when dh knock the plate down and they scatter on the ground. DO make sure and explain to entrepreneurial daughter that you can’t sell cookies that have been on the ground), and freshly popped popcorn.
4) Stress about not making professional looking signs for the concession stand, and/or downloading decor like this.
5) Get out-sold by the kids at the concession stand in the first hour. (Hour 1: Our junk=$4 Concessions $4.75)
6) Visit your neighbors’ sales and bring home more of their stuff than you sell.
7) Use profit from sales to order pizza with neighbors and chill on your lawn.
8) Make sure and rescue neighbors’ unsold items from going to the trash (bring home even more stuff).
9) Send dh directly to Goodwill drop-off so that you can walk through the living room.
10) Make a new Goodwill box for all the stuff the kids managed to pull out of the boxes before they left for Goodwill. :-/
11) Hold on to your nicest shippable items and see if you can sell them on-line…
Uh-hem….anyone want to buy my barely used Pottery Barn Duckie Shower Curtain
or
this custom-lined (mom did it) curtain with ties on the bottom from Target?
(Seriously, comment or email me if you are interested!).
And that’s how you have an insane yard/garage sale! While we didn’t make a haul financially, we had a fun time with our neighbors and the kids had some good lessons in business. My daughter actually did most of the baking, I just did the decorating with this frosting while she manned her stand. It may have been more worthwhile financially to just take stuff to Goodwill, but putting a date on the calendar is more motivating than saying someday we’ll take this stuff to Goodwill.
And…I made an exchange with my neighbor for some home decor items that I’m excited to show you! So it wasn’t a waste.
Do you do garage/yard/tag sales? What are your tips? Have you ever made a ton of money from one? Do you plan to hold one this Spring? Do share!
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HA!! That really made me laugh. 🙂 Your daughter sounds like my eldest son, always the entrepreneur! He likes to sell bottled water for $1 during the hot month sales, and he ALWAYS cleans up!
Sounds like fun! I always make grand plans for yard sales and we end up going to Goodwill anyway.
Awesome! Our last garage sale was last summer and we made nearly 500 dollars. I have no idea how either as we didn't sell anything big…just a bunch of little stuff.
Maybe I will let my daughter have a cupcake stand for our next one…those are so cute!
I can't wait to see what you got from your neighbors!
That post was hysterical! I can relate! It really is a lot of work, no one seems to tell you this until after the fact! We were just contemplating doing one BUT Maybe we will host a concession stand, my son loves to raise money for our local food pantry and open up the back of our SUV for donations for them as well! Glad you survived.
Haha…this is hilarious. I love garage sales!
Funny, true, and those cupcakes look fantastic! I hate garage sales- they seem to waste my time. In fact, I brought out my ironing board and caught up on our laundry while I managed shop one time!