It's about time...

...I have a yard sale! I'm up to my ears in junk and have about had it. Moving is great because it forces you to clean out, but it also uncovers a lot of stuff you forgot you had! Between my fiance and me, we've got enough stuff to have a yard sale...and if it doesn't happen soon, I may go crazy looking at the stuff piled up in his basement. I mean, his basement looks like we could be on an episode of hoarders. Ha! Well, maybe its not that bad, but when you are a neat freak like me, anything that is not in its place is stressful.

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So, I've been trying to read up on yard sales since I have never had one and here are some great tips I found on Young House Love...

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• Start Early: We began prepping 2 hours ahead of the 8am start time so that we were ready for the inevitable 7:45 early birds (and boy did they flock to our house).
• Advertise Smart: We thrice posted the sale on Craigslist leading up to Saturday. And that morning, we hung a bunch of strategically placed hot pink signs to lure people to our home. We even got compliments on our signage, saying that the consistent look, bright color, and “multi-family” claim (my sister participated too) made them especially enticing.
• Look Big: We spread things out to fill our entire driveway – as you can see in the “before” above. Larger items went closest to the road, while the trinkets were displayed in the back.
• Categorize: We grouped similar items – furniture together, clothes together, books & dvds together, etc. It helped shoppers browse and helped us sell more “sets” of things.
• Set a Goal: We agreed ahead of time that our primary goal was to get rid of stuff, not make money. That way we didn’t hesitate to sell stuff on the cheap because it meant that we were meeting our purging goal.
• Prepare to Negotiate: A bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. The few times that we didn’t come down low enough for buyers and they walked forced us to realize that we should have just met their proposed price. Staring at items that we could have sold (and wondering if they’d ever go) was torture.
• Expect The Unexpected: People buy the strangest things. Some items that we almost didn’t put out (fishing line, tarnished mismatched silverware, pilled towels) sold faster than some of the items we thought would go the second we opened.
• Stay Late: We advertised an 8-12 sale, but we were still selling steadily until around 1 so we stuck around.
• Don’t Take It Back: To completely achieve our empty-basement goal, we immediately loaded the leftovers into the car and drove them straight to Goodwill. We didn’t want anything coming back inside.

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If you have had a yard sale, please send any other tips my way!

Image via Kaleidoscope