How to Organize a Yard Sale
How to Organize a Yard Sale
It’s time to have a yard sale and you need to get things organized. If you hope to have a successful sale, you need to do more than just throw it all together — there needs to be a little bit of method to the madness. Check out these tips to help you get your yard sale organized and hopefully make a little money.
Pick a Date
It might seem like just a simple thing to pick a date for your yard sale, but really you need to do a little more planning. Check around your neighborhood to see if there is a scheduled neighborhood sale coming up or if you have other neighbors who are also planning to hold yard sales. Coordinate with neighbors to pick a date so you can draw more people with more sales.
Sort Your Stuff
Go through your stuff to pick out what you want to sell. Keep in mind that if you haven’t used it in a year (except for seasonal items), chances are you don’t really need it. The idea of having a yard sale is to get rid of things, make room in your home, and hopefully earn a few bucks doing it.
Use plastic storage bins to sort items as you dig them out of your home. Sort clothing into one box, toys into another, household items into yet another and so on. The more you can sort and organize the items for your sale, the better your chances for selling those items.
Set it Up
You will need plenty of tables or at least blankets to place your items out for the yard sale. If you don’t have tables, spread out blankets on the ground then put your items on them. Sort your tables and blankets into like items. For example, have one table or area for just toys, another for just household, another for just electronics. Make signs for each area and be sure the signs are big enough that people can read them from the road. You want to entice people who are driving by to stop and take a closer look.
Advertise
Advertise your yard sale in the local newspapers, on Facebook, on CraigsList, at local stores and businesses and around the neighborhood. Make plenty of signs and fliers to put up to attract shoppers. Include listings of a few bigger items and some of the types of things you have available for sale.
Know Your Prices
Price each item individually or group things together according to price. For example, you may choose to price all stuffed animals at 25 cents each. For bigger items, make sure you know your bottom dollar before someone decides to haggle the prices with you.
A successful yard sale is organized and thought out. Don’t just throw everything together — spend some time putting everything in order so you can make the most money possible and get rid of as much as you can.
If you are in need of better organization skills in general, then we have some things here that will be sure yo help you out! Check out our guide to Getting Organized! If you find that you are still having organization problems, then you might want to try this book on organizing inside and out!
