Garage Sale Mobile Tips

Often, one single household by itself doesn’t always have enough unwanted goods to really hold a worthwhile garage sale. In this case, clubbing together with another household to run a combined garage sale is often a good way to go about it. Two families means twice as many hands to actually run the garage sale – a real bonus. 

A garage sale usually is held to sell off unwanted items. However, you don’t just have to sell second-hand bric-a-brac and clothing at a garage sale. With a bit of planning ahead and some know-how, you can sell a few other things and get some extra cash. A few ideas just to get you started:

• Do you have a fruit tree producing surplus fruit? Then sell the fruit – or get really organised and make jam for sale. Homegrown fruit usually tastes better than supermarket fruit, so this usually sells well.
• The same applies to homegrown vegetables. Now you know what to do with that zucchini surplus. 
• If you don’t grow vegetables or fruit, how about bunches of fresh flowers? 
• Plants themselves can sell. Raising houseplants in pots is simple, and they often sell well at garage sales. In early spring, you can target home gardeners by raising vegetable plants from seed and selling off the seedlings ready to plant – lettuces, cabbages, pumpkins, tomatoes and zucchini work brilliantly – owners of conservatories and glasshouses, take note!
• Home baking also sells well at garage sales. Make sure the table displaying these is not in full sunlight for food safety reasons, and make sure you cover each cake or tray of muffins with cling-film.
• If you paint, take photos or do cross-stitch, you can put some nice framed examples up for sale.
• Home-made clothing (which can include screen-printed T-shirts, knitted sweaters, beads, you name it) can also go on sale at garage sales. This can be a good way of testing the water for a hobby you want to turn into a cottage industry.

The golden rule for garage sales is not to be over-optimistic and unrealistic. People visit garage sales to get bargain prices, so you can’t expect them to cough up the same amount as they would in a shop. 

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.

Some items are easier to sell than others at a garage sale – trust me on this! You may not find a buyer for a life-sized polyresin statue of Elvis (but you might – you never know!) but some things, you are almost guaranteed to find a buyer for… almost, anyway.

1. Baby clothes. Babies need lots of clothes and they grow out of them quickly.
2. Chinaware such as plates, cups and dessert bowls. You may hate the colour or the pattern, but the chances are someone else will love it or not care as long as it’s cheap.
3. Cutlery, for the same reason as above. If you have a full matched set, it’s a sure-fire winner.
4. Drinking glasses, wine glasses and the like. 
5. Things you won as a prize or had given as a gift that you haven’t used and don’t want. These are usually snapped up if they still have the original packaging on them. The same goes for items you bought in a fit of temporary insanity.
6. Good quality tools. Is there a single household that doesn’t need a good screwdriver, hammer, saw and monkey wrench? If you have a dozen duplicate tools lying around, sell them!
7. Furniture. Tables, chairs, sofas and desks are often snapped up by young folk setting up home on their own for the first time as well as those hit by hard times and in need of furniture.
8. Children’s bicycles. Children learning to ride don’t need the latest whizz-bang thing with spring suspension and 24 gears – just something the right size with two wheels will do.
9. Books, especially classics. Some people make a hobby of going around tag sales just to hunt out second hand books.
10. Jewellery. You may not like it any more, but somebody will, even if they buy it for a child’s dressing up box. Don’t sell anything really good quality at a garage sale without doing your homework, though – have it valued first, at the very least.

Many people are holding garage sales – yard sales, boot sales, whatever you want to call them – as a way of making a bit of extra cash during these harder economic times. You may be thinking that it isn’t for you because you have hardly any stuff to sell – or that’s worth selling. It’s barely going to cover a table – not really worth all the effort of writing signs, etc.

1. You expose your items for sale to a much wider audience – even today, not everyone has a computer or access to the internet. And not everyone who does have internet access goes on Ebay.
2. You don’t have to take umpteen pictures of whatever you want to sell.
3. You can alter prices, offer discounts and special deals without any hassle or penalty.
4. You are less likely to have timewasters who are just nosey and end up putting your items onto a watchlist. Anyone who has a look at what you’ve got on offer is more likely to actually buy when you can see them face to face – nosey timewasters are likely to be embarrassed if they don’t buy.
5. You don’t have to compete with half a dozen similar or identical items listed in the same category.
6. No shipping hassles!
7. Both the buyer and seller are protected. They hand over the cash; you hand over the cake mixer. If they don’t hand over the cash, you keep the item. Simple as that. What’s more, buyers can see any flaws, etc. straight away (or they may not notice them, whereas you’d have to mention these flaws if you were being scrupulously honest on Ebay)
8. You don’t have the bad experience of someone making a time to view your whatever-it-is only to not show up after you’ve taken half an afternoon off to be there for them.
9. You get face to face interaction – a very important part of building community and being in touch with your neighbours.
10. People who come in to have a look at, say, a sofa, may also be attracted by some of the other items that catch their eyes.

We're all finding things a bit tight at the moment with the recession, which means that now is the perfect time to hold a garage sale. You might think that seeing as there's a recession on and everyone's feeling the pinch that nobody's going to turn up and buy your old odds and ends – who's got spare cash to spend on quirky curios?

Well, you're half right and half wrong. Yes, the recession may put off some of the people who treat garage sales as a form of entertainment – retail therapy on the cheap, so to speak. These people may decide that they need to rein in their spending a bit. But other types of folk will still come along – or start coming along.

The first type of folk are the professional second hand dealers. These people are always hot on the trail of any garage sale to pick up the hidden treasures, and the recession won't put them off. If anything, they may be hotter on the hunt than before.

The second type are those who are feeling the pinch and are looking for furniture, clothes, books and gadgets at a cheaper price than bought new items, or what they can find in second hand shops (you should be able to figure out why things at second hand shops cost more if you look at the previous paragraph). These folk will start hitting the garage sale trail in the hopes of a bargain – yours included.

So what are you waiting for? Drag out your old treasures from the attic or basement and off you go!