Typically the first place that any one who plans a garage sale looks for goodies, is any area that is frequented by children. Perhaps it’s the playroom or toy room, or maybe its the bedroom, basement or attic. Wherever children’s clothing, toys and books are found, is usually where most garage sale planners start. Why? Because kids items are easy to sell at garage sales.
But what about allowing your children to have a sale? After a massive overhaul of our basement area in preparation to put our house on the market, we realized that with the blending of our five children over a year ago, we had an overabundance of toys, movies, games, clothing and equipment. We had duplicates of over 30 movies – how sad is that? And we had clothing that wasn’t going to fit anyone in our house ever again.
After a lot of careful consideration, planning and organizing, our children are hosting their own garage sale. For safety purposes there will be an adult present at all times, however the sale will be theirs to set up, run and clean up.
We discussed several options for the Children’s Garage Sale, such as hosting it alone, hosting it with our families seasonal garage sale or perhaps hosting it with other neighborhood children. We decided on a combination of the three. We have invited other children on our street to participate, with their own items for sale. The children really wanted to have the sale alone, but the idea of hosting two sales was simply not an attractive alternative with all the other stuff we have to get rid of, so we are going to have them together. With the exception of the children claiming a separate space.
Because we wanted to make this a fun experience, we are going to serve hot dogs and hamburgers off the BBQ for lunch, serve lemonade to the customers, and offer prizes for the most items contributed to the sale, the most money earned, the most sales made, the friendliest sales person, and much more. We will have a prize for every child, and the dollar store was the perfect venue for that.
When the sale is over, I will check in and let you know how it went. If you have any ideas or suggestions we’d love to hear them. Also, if you have any questions, feel free to post them in the comment section.
For more great garage sale advice, check out the garage sale section of the Frugal Living blog.