Back during our spring break week from school, I tackled some cleaning and organizing in our house. I ruthlessly purged each room of the house and we collected a giant pile of stuff that we no longer used or needed. I was simply going to list it all on our local Buy Nothing page, but instead the kids asked if we could have a garage sale. I was reluctant, but agreed that we certainly had enough stuff to have an entire garage sale!
The kids asked no less than once a day for MONTHS, and we finally decided to do it the first weekend in June.
Here is the short version: 2/10 stars, do not recommend.
Haha.
We started early on Friday morning but putting up tables and pulling all of the junk out. The kids and I worked pretty hard for almost two hours to get everything set up- it was a lot of stuff! Meanwhile, Theo put out signs on the roads nearby and helped haul out all the heavy stuff. Thankfully, the weather was beautiful!
We started out by putting price stickers on things, but ended up giving that up pretty quickly- there was a lot of stuff, and honestly- we were open to negotiation on most of it. Ori did get ahold of the stickers and put random stickers on random items, which resulted in a $50 stuffed animal and a 50c drill, but oh well.
Friday was pretty slow- we live on a high traffic road, but most people are FLYING by- there is no slow meandering and there is no foot traffic, either. I think one of the hardest factors was that while I had my expectations pretty low, the kids had their expectations HIGH. I think they imagined steady streams of people bargaining over their old toys and paying top dollar for them. In reality? We mostly had old men stop by, looking for old electronics and tools- neither of which we had.
I tried to stay positive, but my mood and attitude was a mess that day. The kids just kept asking one hundred and fifty million questions- “when will the next person come?”, “when will someone buy my toy?”, “how much money am I going to get?”, “why did that car not stop?”, “where are all the people?” on and on.
I figured Saturday would be a bit busier, and it was – but we actually sold even less on Saturday than on Friday!
By Saturday afternoon when it had been over 2 hours with no one stopping by, I decided to call it and ended up just posting the whole garage sale on Buy Nothing – a “Free Garage Sale”. We still only had one or two people come by, and in the end we had to haul everything else back inside. It was….disappointing.
Now, listen. I wasn’t expecting to make a million dollars here. But I was hoping that we would at least clear out most of the stuff and hopefully get a little cash in the process. It is a lot of work hauling stuff in and out of our barn! But it ended up being quite a disappointment to us all. We had a lot of good clothes, classroom supplies, and books. I was really surprised more people didn’t stop by because those are often very high interest items.
Total Money Made: $170.50
Most Popular Item: Boxcar Children Books
What We Learned:
- Location, location, location. I think we would have had much more success if we were in a neighborhood, especially a neighborhood with kids. In the two days we did the sale, I think we only had 3-4 families with kids stop by.
- Target Audience: We had a lot of older gentlemen stop by, and they weren’t interested in classroom supplies or girls clothing. Instead, we needed more young families to stop by.
- Competition. There were A LOT of other garage sales on the same weekend. I thought this would be a good thing- people would be out “garage sale-ing” and just swing by, but instead I think people were tired of garage sales and didn’t want to stop at one more, especially one that was slightly out of the way without the benefit of a whole neighborhood garage sale.
- It’s a Lot of Work– honestly, having the garage sale itself wasn’t that much work. It was setting it up and tearing it down. I think if we could leave the garage sale out for a week or so, and just go about our daily lives, that would have been so much easier. But spending hours on Friday taking out and organizing everything, then having to haul it all back in on Saturday evening was the biggest challenge. It would have been way more fun (and a lot more “worth it”) if more people had actually stopped by!
In the end, the kids say they really want to do it again- always the optimists around here. Theo and I are like “NEVER AGAIN”, but I can totally see the parental amnesia hitting hard and them convincing us to do one each year. We already decided that if we do another one, we will do it at my parents house where there is more of a neighborhood feel and lots more slow, meandering traffic.
Have you ever hosted a garage sale? Was it a success? Tell me all your tips and tricks that made it so! What’s the best thing you have ever scored at a garage sale?