Authored by Jackie Acosta in Home
Published on 12-08-2008
For every household, there comes a time when all the shelves get full of junk, all the closets overflow with clothes and the living space feels too stuffy to breathe. When this happens, moving to a bigger place is seldom the answer; it often only means that it is high time for a garage sale! Holding a garage sale is a fun, practical and productive way to de-clutter. Aside from getting rid of unwanted or unnecessary items in the house, it can also be a family bonding activity. Needless to say that it is the best way to earn from de-cluttering. Planning a garage sale can be a fun and stress-free activity if done properly.
The first step in planning a garage sale is evaluating the amount of items to be sold. Get the whole family to gather all their belongings that they can get rid of. Closets, shelves and drawers on all corners of the house should be ransacked for things that have not been used in the past six months; those items should most probably be included in the sale pile. There are times when the unwanted things would cause hesitation as there is a small chance that anyone would be interested in buying them but garage sales appeal to different kinds of people who are looking for all sorts of things!
Once the all items are piled up, they should be segregated into categories. Kitchen items for example, is one category and the list goes on with sports goods, toys, books, etc. This way, it will be easy for people to go through the garage sale and look for the things that they need. The next step is evaluating the value of the inventory. In doing this, one must keep in mind that the main point of having a garage sale is to de-clutter, the sale will only make a substantial amount if seen as a whole – the individual items are often very cheap. That is why garage sales attract customers in the first place! Check each item for damages and make sure to point this out to customers. Having a “slightly damaged” pile sold dirt cheap is a good idea to manage expectations of the customers.
A few days before d-day, plan on how the items will be displayed. Bring out the tables, shelves, mats and chairs where the items will be put, a good layout would be one that lets people get to easily go around and view the items on sale. An important part of the display is the prices of the items, showing the prices straight away would attract buyers more than if they would have to ask for the price every single time they see something interesting.
In a garage sale, prices may even be the first point of attraction, so do not deny this of your customers! On the sale day, a good extra touch would be allowing the kids to sell lemonade and cookies, the extra earning gets them more enthusiastic and it would be a refreshing treat for the customers (even if they have to pay for it!).
