Yard Sale

So this weekend we are having our third annual yard sale. My SIL and I started doing this two years ago as a way to make some summer vacation money. Now that we have litle ones to worry about it is more of a way to make some money to pay of bills and such. We have learned alot about how to make a yard sale a success. For example our first year we made about $200 total. We were pleased, because we didn't know how much potential earnings we really had. Last year we made about $600!!! Here are the tricks we learned to increase the earnings:

1. Spend the $26 and put the ad in the Times Daily not the Courier Journal. Also use Craigslist and other free places such as Facebook to advertise.

2. Location is everything! We moved the Yard Sale from my in-laws house in Forest Hills to my house in Heathrow and we more than tripled the number of people that came to the yard sale. They think we have good junk!

3. Have lots of signs that are easy to read. Simply putting Yard Sale and an arrow is always better than lots of small text.

4. Make sure your sale is visible from the street. The first year we did more of a carport sale so you had to actually walk up the driveway to see what we were selling. Last year we put it all over my driveway so you could see it from the road. It was much less intimidating to people.

5. Expect early birds. We always put a time to start in the paper, but people come an hour early. So we pushed the time back until 7am this year. I will let you know how that goes next week :) Last year we couldn't even get the tables pulled out for people coming to shop.

6. We have learned to end the sale before noon. You might have a few customers after 11, but most serious yard salers are up early!!!

7. Clothes sell better if they are clean and on hangers. Offer the hangers to the customers and have bags ready to bag all the items people buy. We ran out of bags last year, and everyone kept asking for bags so this year we are well stocked!

8. Items with high price tags do not sell. We tried to sell furniture last year, and people wanted to pay $25 for a solid wood coffee table with matching end tables. A friend of mine ended up buying the set for $75 so if you feel that the furniture is worth more hold on to it. I also was able to sell a dining room table and chairs and an entertainment center to friends or friends or friends through word of mouth. I made much more money from these not selling them at the yard sale.

This year I am trying to sell some appliances (we will see how this goes) and we have lots and lots of clothes. I know we would come out better to consign them, but its just easier to yard sale them. I can't wait to have this behind us, and I hope we make lots of money!!!! Jordan and I have completed Dave Ramsey's Baby Step #1 and we have also saved enough to pay for Baby Seth's delivery! This was a huge burden off of us, and we may not have money for the crazy food Mommy wants right now, but Seth can be born without huge medical bills building up! We are planning on putting all of our earnings from this weekends yard sale towards our debt snowball. It would be wonderful to make enough to pay off some of those small credit cards or even my root canal :) I will post next week and let y'all know how much money we make and what we spend it on.