337!

Guess what? I made $337 at my garage sale this weekend! And, even better, I got rid of a TON of stuff in the process! It was a lot of work but I'm so happy I did it. For anyone out there considering having a garage sale of your own, here are some things I learned along the way.

1. Have a goal: Yes, my goal was to get rid of stuff and make some money. But my REAL, big-picture goal is re-do the built-in cabinets in our basement this winter. Whenever I'd come across something I wasn't sure I wanted to sell I asked myself if someone would give me money for it, and if that money put me closer to my goal of fixing up our basement and creating more living space for us, would I sell it to them? In almost every instance the answer was always, "HELL YES." Having that carrot on a stick motivated me to be much more objective about getting rid of things.

2. Be thorough, you never know what you might find: I got ready for the sale over the course of about three weekends. I literally went through every plastic bin, every cabinet, and every drawer in our house looking for things I could sell. Not only did I find stuff I forgot I even had that I ended up selling, I found things I forgot I even had that I'm using and enjoying now.

3. Show 'em what you got: I posted Craigslist ads Thursday and Friday and included pictures of things I was selling. I tried styling them as best I could, although that was a challenge considering I took the photos late at night in my garage, which has peeling seafoam green walls. Here's a sample:



Having pictures definitely helped. People came looking for specific things they saw in the photos and one woman even said, "Your stuff looked so cute, the pictures made me want to buy it all!" I also put up signs around the neighborhood the night before that included descriptions of things I was selling.

4. How you display things matters: I had a bunch of baby clothes to sell and a friend of mine gave me the great idea of hanging them on a clothesline with clothespins. Stuff hanging up sold, but the other stuff in a big bin did not. (I had too many things to hang them all.) People don't like to dig through bins of stuff that isn't organized. However,people do like to dig through bins of free stuff. I'll get to that tip in a minute.

I also had a lot of clothes of my own in great condition that I wanted to get rid of so I borrowed a couple of clothing racks and wrote out individual hang tags for each item (there were a few things that had never even been worn so using the tags instead of price stickers allowed me to write that on there). I also borrowed a big mirror and set up a make-shift dressing room off the side of the house. It worked! I sold TONS of clothes.



5. Have a sale at your sale: Although making money was nice, getting rid of so much stuff was almost nicer. At the beginning of the sale I put up signs that said during the last hour, everything left would be half price. People really did come back. They got stuff at crazy low prices, and I got rid of stuff I otherwise may have been stuck with.

6. Give stuff away: I set out a plate of free cookies, which helped build goodwill with my shoppers. I also had a big crate of magazines that I marked free, most of which disappeared. But the busiest bin of all was the FREE STUFF bin that had all sorts of random stuff in it. Fabric remnants, clothes with small spots and tears, gladware containers, makeup samples you pull out of magazines - gone! Most were things I otherwise would have thrown away so it was good to see them go off to good homes.

7. Invite your friends to join you: My friend Stefanie came over with some of her stuff to sell. She got rid of some stuff and made some money, I had her help and her company for a few hours, and we both ended up with some of each other's stuff that we liked. Winners all around.

One final benefit of having this sale was spending time in corners of our home that don't see a lot of action. Along the way I was also inspired to clean out the attic, better organize the back room of our basement, and am in the process of making a list of projects I'd like to tackle this winter. We've been in this house four years and that's enough time to become complacent. It's time to break some bad habits we've gotten into. When paint chips, I want to touch it up. When things break (even the little things), I want to fix them. When your neighbor shoots holes in your window with a BB gun trying to kill squirrels, I want to plug the holes up. That kind of stuff - the kind of stuff that makes your home feel much healthier inside and out.