The Mathews were uber busy, but our hard work putting together the yard sale definitely paid off! I wanted to share with you what we did to prepare and execute all things yard sale related, should you be considering having one of your own.
RULES FOR HAVING A SUCCESSFUL YARD SALE
or...what worked for us
1. Make sure you have a LARGE amount of things you'd like to get rid of. A handful of clothes does NOT a yard sale make. You have to draw the shoppers in with plenty to look at, and seeing just one or two tables covered with a smattering of odds and ends probably won't make anyone want to stay and keep looking. This is not to say, however, that you can't make a little extra cash with only a few items, but our goal was to be able to cover a major part of our kitchen renovation and this is how we did it.
After going through ALL of the closets in our house, ALL of the boxes that are currently holding the entire contents of our kitchen, ALL of our dvds & cds, and ALL of the kids toys, we ended up with entire tables covered with:
kitchen items- dishes, glassware, trays, pitchers
scrapbook supplies- books, entire box of stickers/diecuts, photo albums
home decor items- 2 comforter sets, decorative pillows, lamp shades
antique tools/knives- all 60-100 years old
toys- 3 kiddos = toys coming out of our ears
children's clothes- I had boys size 6 month- 5T and girls size 3 -12 month
shoes & handbags- everything from clutches, purses, tote bags and boots, heels, sandals and wedges
baby items- blankets, wipe warmer, shopping cart cover, diaper bags
electronics- one 37 inch tv, 1 toaster oven, 2 hand-held vacuum cleaners, one cd player w/ speakers
We also had stacks and stacks of books- probably 50-60 adult books and about 30 children's books. Not to mention, this:
and this:
Other than the items listed above, we had 1 small table and 2 chairs that were the only pieces of furniture in our sale.
2. Make sure you get the word out. I know this may seem like common knowledge, but, you really have to spread the word about your yard sale as far and as wide as you can. There are so many social media sites that are perfect for doing this. On Monday of last week, the hubs listed our sale on Craigslist and on Tuesday I blogged about the sale and began posting pictures of items on facebook and twitter. From the blog, facebook, and Craigslist alone, we had a total of 15 shoppers before the actual sale even started on Friday. (Listing an ad in the paper is another route we could've taken, however, I'm pretty sure that costs money and we didn't really want to spend anything on promotion. This could have really hurt us, but, it didn't seem to affect us at all. Would we have sold more if we had put it in the paper? Who knows, but we had plenty of traffic both days from resources that we did use that were F.R.E.E.)
I also made 5 beautiful (if I do say so myself) signs which we placed at each entrance into our neighborhood and at the entrances to a nearby neighborhood. These also brought in LOTS of shoppers. Of course, we also have a huge advantage because we live off of one of the busiest streets in our city. We had quite a few people tell us they stopped by after seeing the sign.
**On that note, I wanted to show you how I made the signs without spending a DIME for the supplies:
If you've got boxes, then you've got pieces of cardboard that can be turned into awesome yard sale signs. I recently ordered a large canvas and still had the box, so I cut the large sides off-
and was able to get 2 decent-size signs out of that one box.
It was really just one giant piece of cardboard on the back-
which made for another sign. After cutting apart 2 more smaller boxes, I had enough cardboard for 5 signs. I took all of them outside and gave them a quick, even coat of white spray paint. What I didn't want was to slap some sloppy, handwritten letters onto plain cardboard. We can do better than that.
I pulled out my cricut and my new Hannah Montana cartridge,
yes, you read that right,
and I cut out all of my letters in a matter of 10 minutes. Since black letters on a white sign are a little boring, I used a cake stand as a circle template and cut out 3 large brightly-colored cardstock circles to place behind the lettering on each sign.
***I'd like to point out that you DON'T have to have a die-cut machine to make your letters, however, I do think your signs should look neat and be easily readable. Is that a word? Well, you know what I mean- if it's hard to read or the writing is too small or scribbled, it's not attracting ANYONE***
Basic info that needs to be on your yard sale signs:
YARD SALE
your address
time/day(s)
That's it. Clean and simple.
I'd love to show you the finished products, but they have our address on them and I'd like to avoid crazies showing up at the house. We attached each of the signs to old campaign signs with the metal frames which stick into the ground really well. And, since I put 'Friday & Saturday' and not the actual dates, we can keep the signs and use them again should we have another sale while we're still living in this house.
3. Make sure you price it right. There are 2 ways to price your items in a yard sale. You can go the route of pricing everything beforehand with a sticker that states 5 cents, 25 cents, 5 dollars, etc. OR you can give someone a price when they ask. We went with the latter. We picked a price for all of the items that we had in bulk- dvds ($1), books (.25-.50), men's dress shirts ($1),
antique tools ($1), and came up with what we thought were sensible prices for all of the other items in the sale. Every single time a shopper asked for a price, they ended up purchasing the item with the exception of a woman who tried to buy a brand new Laundry dress from me for .25. In her defense, I think she was a little on the crazy side. Or maybe she was just a little on the shoplifter side since she ripped the tag off of the dress and piled children's clothes on top of it in her hands, hoping I wouldn't see it in the mix. Sheesh.
** And wives, this note is for you-
Never ever EVER leave your husband ALONE with shoppers while you run in the house to check on your kids or he might sell both of your comforter sets with the decorative pillows for $7 and your entire box of scrapbook stickers + embellishments + scrapbooks for $3.
DOUBLE SHEESH + BLARGITY BLARG BLARG
Anywho...
back to the list.
4. We had a strict "no re-entry" policy which meant that nothing from the yard sale could re-enter the house. Not no way, not no how. Everything that was left at the end of the day on Saturday we either consigned, donated to our church, or dropped off at one of our local thrift stores. I can't tell you how awesome it feels to finally have it ALL gone. The house feels lighter. I honestly think it can breathe better now. Not kidding. Not to mention what a mess we had going on for a week while I was pulling from each room and placing here-
in the foyer & dining room. And since our dining room is also currently serving as our kitchen during the renovation, it was a double hot mess, BUT, it's all gone now. Yay for no re-entry!
Shout it with me-
"YAY FOR NO RE-ENTRY!"
I'm sure there are things I'm forgetting at the moment, but for the most part this is what worked for us. Like I said before, our goal was not to make thousands and thousands of dollars, but to be able to cover one of the next 2 phases of our kitchen renovation which are drywall + labor, and flooring. Would you like a grand total?
We ended up making a profit of $1,100, which will cover the cost of purchasing all of the drywall AND the labor to install it.
And remember, we didn't even have any big ticket items. Hubs even sold the tv (which was a 37-incher) for $5 and don't forget the comforter sets and scrapbook stuff, and by mid-morning on Saturday we started slashing our prices or just straight up giving things away. We also kept the kids happy with free toys- since we all know kids eyes go straight to toys within a mile radius, we let them have the smaller toys they picked up for free, which kept them happy AND occupied while their parents were shopping.
crafty, eh?
Maybe these tips will be helpful when you have your next yard sale. What could be better than cleaning out your house + making a little extra cash + donating to charity? It's a win win win.
***
Before I close out today's post, I wanted to share a few pictures from a festival that was held in our church's parking lot Saturday night. As most of you know, our church was destroyed in a tornado back in April, and since then there has been a constant stream of volunteer groups from churches all over the country coming to our parking lot to reach out to the community around our church or to help with relief efforts where ever needed. On Saturday, a group from Hayneville, AL came to do just that. They worked all day, helping to distribute items to survivors and working on homes that were damaged. and at 5:00 pm, they held their church's Fall Festival in our church's parking lot-
Oliver and Eliza in the bouncy house
They served barbeque, hotdogs, desserts, and all kinds of snacks.
Eliza LOVED riding the ponies, which was a little odd since she's scared of even the smallest of dogs. She didn't want the pony ride to end though. In the background of this pic, you can see what a lot of Alberta City still looks like-
piles of rubble.
O loved the pony rides too. If we were really uppity, we would've just bought a couple for the kids.
No worries though.
We're not really uppity.
MM watching O and E from the shade of her stroller
Mega-huge slide
Cooper and Carter riding the ponies
Olivia
Maggie
E rides the pony, take 2
This was about as close as MM wanted to be
What our church looks like now with no front, steeple, roof, or windows.
So thankful for Hayneville, who brought almost their entire congregation, and for all of the other groups that have been so generous to our church since the storm. (For more info on our church, see THIS post)
Well- that was most of our busy, but fun weekend. Can't believe school is just around the corner. Any of you have big plans for an end-of-summer trip or party? I think the Mathews are going to try and get some rest after the week we just had. Yes, rest sounds awesome.
Here's hoping YOU get some rest on this Monday too!
