Putting on a yard sale can be a tremendous task. Some people take weeks, even months, to get prepared for a yard sale event.

But let’s say you aren’t interested in doing that. You don’t have the time to plan, organize and execute a yard sale — or at least you don’t have much time at all.

With that in mind, here’s a guide to make a yard sale happen in seven days.

The scenario is a typical one: You have been thinking about hosting a yard sale and suddenly the fates align, and you realize that next Friday you have the opportunity.

Here’s your timeline to get your yard sale up and running:

FRIDAY (Seven days from the yard sale)

• Find an empty room (garage, basement or guest room) and clear out some space. You will use this area as your collection point.
• Search through your storage areas and find unwanted items. Since this is a storage area, you’ll know all these items are essentially “ready to sell.”
• Instruct other family members to find their own unwanted items from their rooms.
• You serve as primary sorter. Sort items of value into piles or boxes: 50-cent items, $1 items, $3 items and $10 items. (Try to keep all like items at the same price, such as clothing items and DVDs)

SATURDAY (Six days from the yard sale)

• Search your own household areas (kitchen, your room, living room, etc.) for unwanted items.
• Locate suitable display tables. You can contact friends, use your own or rent them.  You will need a table for each price category you have.
• Clean any items that need cleaning.

SUNDAY (Five days from the yard sale)

• Mow the lawn today, rather than the day before your sale. It gives your lawn time to “prepare” for a trampling. Work on making the outside of your house presentable. Consider where your tables will be set up.
• Test electronic items.
• Look for instruction booklets and original boxes for items.
• If needed, coordinate a babysitter for your yard sale days.
• Scout around for some more items to sell.

MONDAY (Four days from the yard sale)

• Survey your items for sale and write up a classified ad. Start with your coolest items first, then list other items that bring in the crowds, such as clothing (include sizes and brand names, if possible).
• Make signs to promote your sale. You will want to post them on the turn-in to your street (both directions) and on two other intersections that lead to your house. That means you should create six signs (again, two for each posting area).
• Make up price signs rather than individually pricing all items. The quick way to price items is by pricing in the “Everything on this table is $1″-style. You need to make price signs for each of your price categories.
• Individually price the few items that need special prices.
• This is it. Your chance to discover even more items to sell! Did you look in the shed?

TUESDAY (Three days from the yard sale)

• Reread your rough draft for the classified ad and place it.
• Prepare some food for the big day: Make some baked goods to sell; Purchase a few cases of water and soda; Unthaw some hotdogs in the fridge.  (You can make a killing on food on a hot day!)
• Go out an post your signs.
• Check the weather forecast. Determine if you’re likely to have nice weather and whether you should cancel or not.
• Get some of your basics around: Get some grocery bags, clean up your lawn chairs, check your grill, find some old table cloths, find a cash box.
• Look for even more items to add to the sale. Surely there’s something else? Maybe a quick survey of the kids’ rooms.

WEDNESDAY (Two days from the yard sale)

• Check your classified ad and make sure it looks nice. Check to see if your signs are still up.
• Get your cash for the sale. We recommend $40 in tens, $40 in fives, $20 in ones and $10 in quarters.
• Clean out your cooler to store drinks.
• Put your tables in place on the front lawn. This will let the neighbors know where the sale is happening.
• Have you looked everywhere for extra items to sell? What about in the car trunk? Or in those storage bins hidden in the corner?

THURSDAY (One day from the yard sale)

• Put tablecloths down.
• Attach price signs to each table.
• Prep your large items to move out front. You can leave them in your backyard until morning.
• Just before nightfall, set up your tables.
• Wrap tables in tarps to protect them from the night’s dew.
• Put ice in cooler.
• Drop kids off at babysitter. Or at least prep them for taking them to babysitter.
• Go to bed early.

FRIDAY (Yard sale day!)

• Wake up early, eat a big breakfast.
• Pull out large items.
• Unwrap tables.
• Bring out food supplies.
• Turn on stereo for some nice background music.
• Open up your yard sale, rake in the dough.

SATURDAY (Yard sale day — Part 2)

• Make more money!

 

 

 

 

 

 

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You have to love YouTube. We were clicking through our regular loop of videos when something “new” popped up in the window — a song called “Yard Sale” by country crooner Sammy Kershaw.

Go on, give it a listen. http://youtu.be/kF1CYC6L-2E

This is one we’ve never heard before. Must be that Mr. Kershaw wasn’t a family favorite in the Yard Sale Secrets household, since we certainly heard a lot of country music while tooling around in the back seat of mom’s station wagon.

The song, which came out in 1992, peaked at No. 17 in the U.S. charts. In it we see Sammy selling off his memories one at a time — all the while pining for his lost love.

Yep it’s typical country.

As we watched, we kept on looking for price tags on his stuff we noticed a few things:

• 38 seconds in Sammy is trying to sell some ice cube trays. One of those things you should never sell. It’s just kind of gross.
• At 1:04, he’s committing another no-no — leaving records out in the sun to warp!
• Not long after, he hasn’t bothered to fold up those nice blankets. In fact, he left them in his steamer chest! It’s all about presentation, Sammy!
• By 1:34, he’s learning a few things. He grouped his like items together. Why buy one vintage Kentucky Derby glass when you can buy two?
• We award him bonus points at 1:57 because he was smart enough to put that pretty dress on a hangar.
• Well into the video, we see the closing minutes of his yard sale, and he’s still got lots of stuff. Our advice: Keep those tables closer together and consolidate them as you go. Move the big items out front to get a little curb appeal.  And, brother, no one’s gonna buy a wedding dress that’s been dragged through your lawn.
• And throughout the video, we were h hoping to catch a glimpse at sale prices. Unfortunately, there wasn’t a single one to be seen. No florescent pre-printed stickers. No masking tape. Not even a sign.

Bad form, Sammy! You should price everything at your yard sale.

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YTI Career Institute here in York, Pa., recently held a special kind of yard sale, they created a “professional” yard sale.

By that, they meant shoppers could browse through a large selection of items for use in their professional development — namely business attire.

We love the idea of a themed yard sale, and even have a few tips on creating one:

• Why do a theme? A themed yard sale is interesting. It can generate publicity. It can pull people in from all over.
• Actually stick to your theme: Make sure you aren’t adding any oddball things into the sale. You don’t want your theme to be diluted, thereby making it less unique.  (In the YTI case, don’t allow the sale of a “Star Wars” DVD, but a DVD on business strategies is fine.)
• Make it worth the effort: Don’t advertise a themed yard sale and only have a card table worth of merchandise. You need to go all out and make it worth your customer’s time. This concept is the hardest to achieve since who knows if you have enough merchandise to hold up your end of the deal.  (YTI worked around this by having multiple people offer themed items to their sale.)
• Advertise: Go crazy with your advertising and make sure they know exactly what to expect. More importantly, start your advertising early — weeks in advance. Make sure your potential shoppers plan their day around your event.

 

Now of course, the idea of a themed yard sale isn’t anything new — but often times, they’re just something else in disguise.

We remember times when we were champing at the bit to get to a “scrapbookers yard sale” only to discover that it was just a going-out-of-business sale for a scrapbooking store. The same thing happened for the “tool sale,” which was just a garage emptying out its junk.

Another thing we’ve come across are “yard sales” that are really just a set-up for a Thirty-One saleswoman … or Avon … or Silpada … or whatever the current at-home marketing craze is.

It’s also not uncommon for a craftsperson to advertise in the yard sale section. You’ll find people who make birdhouses, paint pottery, arrange flowers or assemble custom dolls.

All this is perfectly fine, of course. We like the idea of a themed yard sale. We just want to know what to expect when we get there.

YTI however did it just right. They set up a sale that benefitted its students, and that’s exactly what they did.  Good job, YTI!

 

 

 

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Last month, the Yard Sale Secrets team offered you “4 things to do in January to prepare for your yard sale.” We’re already half-way through February, so we figured we ought to keep you working hard to make the most out of your upcoming retail extravaganza.

So, now that you have all those January items checked off we have a new list for you.

1) CUTBACK ON HOLIDAY DECORATIONS: When Valentine’s Day is over, you’ll be clear of any holidays for a little while. Sure, maybe you decorate for St. Patrick’s Day. And maybe you do a total blow-out for Easter, but this is — at the least — a temporary lull in the holidays. So now is a great time to start sorting through holiday decorations. Hit the bins marked for Christmas, Halloween, Thanksgiving and Fourth of July. Try to reduce all of them by at least 20 percent. Throw out items that are broken. Put anything else you don’t want anymore in your yard sale bin.
2) CHECK THE RULES: Some municipalities have very explicit rules on how you can conduct your garage sales. Others just want to get a couple of bucks from you to help the bottom line. Take a few minutes to call your municipality and check up on those rules. Better to know now rather than be forced to change your plans later.
3) VISIT THE ATTIC: Even in early spring, your attic can be a dismal place to spend a few hours sorting through what you want and what needs to go. Head up there this weekend and do your sorting in the pleasantly cool temps. You don’t necessarily have to bring it out of the attic. Just get it organized and ready to be pulled down at a moment’s notice.
4) AVOID THE PRICING TEMPTATION: Whatever you do, DO NOT start pricing your items now. Sure, you can mentally price them, just don’t put price stickers on them just yet. Most yard sale price stickers are not meant to stay on for months at a time. They eventually lose their adhesive properties and flutter to the floor. How about masking tape, you ask? Don’t do that either. Masking tape and other stickers tend to leave a terrible residue or destroy the object its affixed to if left on too long.

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Yard sales take a lot of time to pull off, so getting started now will help you be organized as the big sale approaches.

1) START A BIN: Buy a big storage tub, dedicate a room or otherwise create a space to put all the items you plan on selling at the yard sale. Now that you have this place, start filling it with yard-sale worthy items. Tell your family to put anything they don’t want (except that broccoli you served for dinner) in “the pile.” In no time, you’ll have a healthy inventory of money-makers.

2) SORT YOUR WINTER CLOTHES: Go through your current wardrobe of winter clothes and decide what you like and what you want to sell. If you store your winter clothes in totes during the warmer months, this is especially important so you don’t have to dig them back out. While you’re at it, you might as well launder all of them, too. When your done, store them in your yard sale spot inside tied grocery bags (to keep them dust free).

3) PICK YOUR DATE: This is the time of year when the vacation planner is circulating around the office. Figure out the best days for your yard sale and take off a few days before so you can prepare. Tell your family, neighbors and friends at work about your plans and maybe they’ll join in too. Remember, the chances of bad weather on your yard-sale day during your yard-sale hours are actually quite slim, so just go ahead and schedule it.

4) BEGIN YOUR LIST: Keep a notepad in your yard sale bin area, and every time you put something in it, write it down. This will help you in two ways. First, it will help you remember what’s going in there in case you decide you need those 2-sizes-too-small ski boots again. Second, as your yard sale date approaches, you’ll have a great start on writing a classified ad — you won’t have to say “something for everyone” or “too much to list” when you have a complete inventory of what’s for sale.

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The new year is upon us, and we’ve already started to think about yard sales for the upcoming season.

In particular, we found this article fairly interesting.

The interviewee, Aaron LaPedis, says he’s earned more than a million on the garage sale circuit, and wrote a book on the subject. We tend to agree with him on most of the points he makes here (bring a smart phone, be an expert on a few things, make great signs), but we vehemently disagree with his suggestion to “not price anything” at your yard sale. We often walk away from yard sales where things aren’t priced, so this is a case of “seller beware!”

In fact, even several of the comments at the end of the article say the same thing.

As for Yard Sale Secrets, expect us to get back into the swing of things in late March or April, but keep checking back for occasional blitzes in posts from us between now and then.

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