I have a yard sale every 3 to 5 years.  It seems to take me around that time to accumulate enough stuff to hold one.  I like having yard sales, they are hard work but fun and can be very gratifying.  What usually happens is I do my spring cleaning around May each year and then take an inventory of what I have (Please see my Spring Cleaning post for some tips and benefits of spring cleaning). If I feel my home and/or storage area is bursting with stuff that other people might want, I have a sale.

I must mention before I go any further that my motivation for holding a sale is to get rid of clutter, making cash on the side is more of an extra benefit. That’s what I feel yard sales should be. Make the items cheap and sell them for a song, after all, you don’t want them anymore.  Your buyers will love you. If I had very valuable/big ticket items to sell, I’d do it on eBay not at a yard sale.

A sale is hard work and I don’t make lots of cash doing it, so why have one?

1. I make my family help so it’s a way to spend a whole day together.  And we have sandwiches or a pizza for lunch out in the yard!

2. We have a family project to do.  Everyone gets in the act when we prep for the sale.

3. We get rid of clutter.

4. We get to know my neighbours/community a bit more.  We get to meet/see the people who will be next in line to use and love our stuff.  Sometimes I like finding out who will be inheriting my stuff.  When a charity picks up my stuff, I don’t know who is going to get it.

5. We still manage to make some extra cash. (At minimum, the cash I make is enough to buy a big pizza lunch and a couple of dinners out at a moderately priced restaurant for 3 people - not bad!)

Here’s a link to a site that has a lot of neat tips for holding a successful yard sale: http://www.yardsalequeen.com/yardsale.htm

And here are some of my personal tips for yard sales (I tried not to repeat the tips that I had in common with the list from the link above):

1. Decide on a date:  Check weather reports, a lot of people aren’t too excited to go to yard sales on rainy or even cloudy days.

2. Have all your stuff ready: sale items tagged, price list printed out, small change ready, etc. at the very least, the day before the sale.  

3. Ask for help from friends and family members.  Make it a fun day.  Buy them a pizza and some refreshments for lunch.

4. During the sale, make sure your house is secure.  If no one is inside, make sure the house is locked.  Cordon off off-limits areas to the public.  Keep items not for sale in off-limits areas as much as possible, or if not, mark the item clearly NOT FOR SALE.

5. Keep sale items cheap/affordable.  For bigger items it might be better to use eBay.

7. People will bargain, and I let them!  As long as I don’t feel they’re trying to trick me or rip me off, I usually lower the item’s price for them.

8. At the end of the day I like having as little as possible to put away so I mark a whole table or bundle os items as “All these items for $5″.  Whatever is left unsold, I donate to charity.

For more organizing tips and stories, visit the Organizing section of this website.