Having your own yard sale is a great way to de-clutter your home and earn a little extra spending money besides. But getting everything ready for a yard sale can be a daunting task. Here are some tips on how to get everything organized.
Make a Staging Area
Pick an out of the way area of your home where you can store, price and organize your yard sale inventory. Most people use the garage or a spare bedroom. Our neighbor makes use of a camper on their property. Having a place to go to drop things off as you find them, helps keep everything organized and reduces the interruption to your family when the clutter, I mean inventory, starts to build up. It also helps you avoid bringing things back into the main part of your living area.
Compartmentalize
In your staging area have several boxes and a permanent marker. Mark different categories on the boxes, such as books, toys, kitchen items, tools, etc. This will allow you to keep everything grouped together and make it easier to have a nice organized sale where buyers know exactly where to look. You’ll sell more things when they are displayed nicely together. For that matter, hang clothes on hangers.
Find Your Stuff
For a good yard sale, you’ll need a large variety of stuff to sell. Fortunately, you don’t have to go very far to find it. Go through your home room by room to identify things that you no longer need. I like to start at the top of the house and work my way down, having a large box available. When the box is full, it goes off to the staging area to be sorted.
Prep and Price
When you have all of your inventory, it is time to go through it all, clean up anything that needs attention, toss anything broken and add prices to everything. Pricing is important, since many people won’t bother considering an item without a price.
That is it. When it comes time for your sale, it should just be a matter of bringing your items out and placing them nicely.
Mary Ann Romans writes about everything related to saving money in the Frugal Blog, creating a home in the Home Blog, caring for little ones in the Baby Blog and now relationships in the Marriage Blog. You can read more of her articles by clicking here or subscribe to the blog using the subscription box on the right.
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