Garage Sales 101: Part 1

I maybe should call this little series Garage Sales: Elementary Edition, since I'm a relative beginner in the world of garage sale-ing. Garage Sales 101 seems to implicate more of a collegiate-level offering of information. Ah, well...either way it is garage sale season, and I wanted to walk you through how we're doing it here and now.

This is Maren and her $20 Fisher Price Little People collection we found on our first day out this season. The guy wanted to sell the lot together, and for $20 I couldn't refuse! I originally planned on re-selling the garage, but it's turned out to be Maren's favorite thing!
This will be my first year hosting a sale in our very own garage. For the past couple of years I have joined forces with a few friends, and we've had successful sales. Until now, I've been too chicken to branch out on my own. If you've never held a garage sale before, joining with a few others is a great way to start. It takes some of the pressure off of having a yard-full of stuff to sell, and it really is just plain old fun. (So long as you partner with people you'd actually like to spend a couple of mornings alongside!)

Maybe someday I will share a post on the best approach to group-garage-sales. I have definitely learned a few things!

Today I want to focus on STEP I: gathering items. In my opinion, one of the most overwhelming parts of garage sale preparation is the process of accumulating items to sell. Here are tips I have found helpful in this regard:

• Start early! Don't wait for the weeks before the garage sale to clean out closets. I try to have all of my items set aside no later than 3 weeks before the sale. Those long winter days are great for sorting and cleaning! This will allow plenty of time for pricing and setting-up.
• Keep it clean. All of my items go into the pile in 'ready-to-sell' fashion. Clothes are clean, dust is wiped off, small repairs are made as necessary. The nicer your items look, the more money they will bring in!
  
• Have a place (or 2!) to put items aside for the sale. We have a two-story house, so I keep a box in a closet upstairs. I have found it to be far easier to toss an item in the box rather than carry it all the way to the basement. When the box fills up, I take a trip downstairs, where we keep the 'big pile'.
• Throw as you go. You don't have to preform a major clean-sweep of your house all in one day. I toss things in the sale box as I find them. From time to time, I will go through a box in my craft room, or see something on a shelf that rarely gets used. It's amazing how much has accumulated in the garage sale pile without ever having a major go-though-closets-day.

This is my current closet pile. It's overflowing a bit now, but next week it all comes out for pricing!

Next week we'll talk about timing, pricing and shopping! Have you had a garage sale before? Do you spread out the preparation, or do it all in the week or two leading up to the sale?

And, just to leave you with a smile, here's Maren in her personally-selected outfit of the day. It's in the upper-80's here, but she insisted on wearing the boots. Oh, the lengths to which we go for beauty!