Garage Sale Mobile Tips

Holding a garage sale is quite a process. If you’ve never tried it before, you might be quite surprised. This is a rough guide to getting organised for holding garage sale. Exactly how long each step will take you depends on you and how much of an organised person you are.

1. Decide to hold the garage sale.
2. Start finding items to be sold. Be realistic about what’s good for selling and what’s not. Obvious rubbish won’t sell. Nor will anything broken, so be fairly ruthless.
3. Mention your garage sale to your friends. They may have some items they want to sell and might be able to help out.
4. Set the date. Check everbody’s schedules so you don’t end up holding it on your daughter’s best friend’s birthday – if you want your daughter to help out.
5. Decide on how you’re going to price everything. You will not get the “brand new” price for items, even if the item is hardly used, so be realistic.
6. Start considering the logistics of the sale. Do you have enough display tables? Plastic bags? Can you duck into a carport or rig up an awning if it rains? How long will you let your sale run for?
7. (At least a fortnight before). Start your publicity in the form of word-of-mouth, flyers and posters in corner store windows.
8. Organise friends and family members to help out. You may have to work in shifts if some members of the family have sport or church commitments over the weekend.
9. Make signs. Good quality ones get better results. Remember to list the date, place and time.
10. (A week before). List your upcoming garage sale in classified advertisements and in online channels.
11. Price everything. Use sticky labels. Don’t use the “everything on this table $10; everything on that table $5” method or try to rely on your memory. 
12. Get the cash float. Have enough handy to give change from a $100 note – you never know! Find a handy place to put the cash float. You don’t want to be ducking in and out of the house to get change, so have it handy to where the garage sale is set up.
13. Organise an extension cord so buyers can try out electrical items and see that they work.
14. If you’re holding the garage sale over the weekend, start putting your signs up on Thursday. If you do it on Wednesday, you may annoy a few people.
15. If you plan on selling baking or coffee at your garage sale, do the baking the day before. If you’re super-organised and have been freezing muffins for sale well beforehand, defrost them the night before. Make sure you have ample supplies of paper cups, milk, sugar, tea and coffee if you’re selling hot drinks. If you’re having an old-fashioned lemonade stand in summer, make up a jug or two and refrigerate this the night before. 
16. (The night before) Get everything ready to put out first thing in the morning, then go to bed early after setting your alarm clock. Six o’clock in the morning is a good time for you to start setting up.
17. Get up, set up tables and prepare for action! People will always turn up early – be ready for this.