Organizing Project: Yard Sale Prep

There's nothing like a neighborhood garage sale to bring my organizing projects to the forefront! I know that if I can get myself together and put in a little effort, I'll be rewarded with a less-cluttered house come next week, which will make it easier to find a place for all the items that we decide to keep. Items that we don't need anymore will be connected with people who need them enough to pay for them (hopefully), and items that no one wants will be donated, where it will be put to good use--if a use can be found.

And hopefully none of the sale items will reappear inside the house somewhere. Oh, and hopefully none of the stuff from my neighbor's sales will end up at our house, lovely items that they are. (Gee, I wonder who might be the culprit of such activities? If it isn't me, it must be one of my dear family members. I might have to lock the house and subject everyone to a search before they are allowed back inside!)

Here is my plan to get ready for the Big Day:

In the week leading up to the sale:

1. Designate a Yard Sale Spot. For me, this will be the table in the basement. It could be any area in your home or garage where you can put all of the items that you are planning on selling in the sale. This is where I will collect everything together for the sale so that I can price items and get things organized by category, etc.

2. Purge. I'll grab some boxes and then move through the house collecting items for the sale. I'm going to use last year's checklist to be sure and hit all the hotspots in my house:

• My closet and drawers
• Daughter's closet and drawers
• Son's closet and drawers
• Linen Closet
• Large kitchen cabinet 
• Pantry
• Buffet in dining room (aka Craft Storage)
• Toy Cabinets, DVD Cabinet
• Basement Play Room
• Garage
• Storage Room

3. Get the family involved. I'll do most of the purging, but I'll encourage the kids to pick some items from the sale (and promise them the money) and I'll beg my husband to find a few things to part with. (I already have a few things in mind!) Another project for the family may be to make signs for the big day.

4. Sort. Before I start pricing items, I want to get things sorted into categories so that I can get a better idea of what I have and what is the best way to price things. If I have a lot of smaller items, I might put them all in a box with a sign that says '25 cents' or similar. Sorting before pricing avoids the situation of pricing two like items the same, or pricing a higher quality item lower than a lower quality item.

5. Price. I use stickers, some of which are blank, some have pre-printed prices on them. Many people like to haggle at yard sales in our area, so I think of prices as a starting point. If I have a lot of small, low price items, I might pile them in a box and put a sign on it that says '$1 each' or similar.

6. Get Change. I'll make a point to go to the bank and get a roll of quarters and a large number of $1 bills, probably about $50 worth of change total.

The day before the sale:

7. Advertise. This is a neighborhood yard sale, so several neighbors are taking care of this step for me. Ordinarily I would post an advertisement on Craigslist.

8. Set-up and Transfer. The day before the sale I'll start set up tables in the garage and transfer everything to that location. (I don't want to do this until the day before the sale because it's rainy here this week and I would rather park my car in the garage as long as possible!)

9. Extension Cord and 'Broken' signs. It's a good idea to have an extension cord set up for the sale so that people can test items with electrical components. For items that don't work well (such as my old Oster stand mixer) or that no longer work, I include a sign stating that fact. You would be surprised at what people are willing to buy even when it doesn't work! I guess they might fix the item, or use it for parts for another item.

The day of the sale:

10. Open Early. Be prepared for the first shoppers to arrive even before your advertised opening time. I typically have shoppers looking at items while we carefully carry tables out of the garage to the driveway (which is why I like to set everything up the day before!)

11.Hang Signs. Post signs at nearby intersections to direct local drivers to your sale. I typically end up doing this after the Early Bird rush is over.

Linked to Top 10 Tuesday and WFMW!

Declutter Challenge October Update: Successes and Failures

I am really glad that I jumped on the declutter wagon again this month and moved additional items out of the house, but it is really hard to keep up with my declutter challenge when there is so much other stuff going on!

First, I have to talk about my failures: I didn't get around to selling anything on Craigslist as I had planned. I find Craigslist overwhelming to deal with. You post your item for sale, and then you have to comb through your email to find the responses. Typically at least one response is from someone who is talking about something you aren't selling (ex. someone was interested in my stove once when I was offering some free tickets to a consignment sale...????). It's difficult to determine who is really interested vs. someone who isn't serious. Some people want to meet you at a location in between, and then they don't show up, or want to meet at a strange time, such as early in the morning (horror stories from friends).

I haven't figured out a smooth way to deal with Craigslist Chaos, so I'm reluctant to do a lot with it. If I am going to sell something on Craigslist before the end of the year, it will have to be this upcoming weekend. Stay tuned next month to find out if I get motivated...or not!

I had an opportunity to sell items at a friend's yard sale over the holiday weekend, which would have been a great way to move the items I am dreading posting on Craigslist. Unfortunately, I had too much going on that weekend and I had to bypass the opportunity. I love that people are getting together and sharing yard sale opportunities, though, and I look forward to participating next time!

I had a steady, tiny stream of book sales on Half.com this month. I am going to count only the transaction that I already received payment for, and count the 3 other sales for November, which means that my Half.com total is $7.75.

I also pushed myself to consign approximately 100 items, and sold over 60 of them, with the rest being donated by the consignment sale to several different organizations. (You can read here about how I track what I sold/didn't sell without picking up the unsold items) Since most items were small and I priced them to sell, I earned just $121.13, significantly less than the big earnings I saw at the spring sale, but better than nothing!

I scraped up 11 items to sell on Ebay, including a few seasonal items I had put aside earlier in the year, thinking they would sell better in the fall. The list included a few Halloween costumes, NFL Football kids' clothes (Steelers stuff, if you care to know), and some little baby shoes, in addition to my newborn cloth diapers, which were so cute and so little they were hard to let go, but sell them I did.

10 of 11 items sold (a couple for only 99 cents, but at least I found someone who wanted and could use the item!) and I made a total of $107.45 after shipping and fees. I have another short list of items for Ebay to sell in November, because so far I find it to be the most convenient way to connect nicer items to people who want them and can use them.

All of these totals added together bring me to $236.33 for the month of October. Two more months to go, and I can tell already that December is not going to be a big month. :) It's time to shift gears and get organized for the holidays!

Check out additional declutter reports at The Finer Things in Life!

Yard Sale and Consignment Deja Vu

I'm having somewhat of a deja vu experience this month. Just like this past spring, I am participating in a consignment sale and a yard sale all in the same week!

The consignment sale is a set event that occurs twice a year, and I am exhaustedly pleased to report that I pulled together just under 100 items to take to the sale: kids' clothing, snow bibs/boots, videos/DVDs/toys, and a few other miscellaneous items, including those items pictured above--except for the 18-wheeler truck, which was withdrawn from the sale by my packrat son. (Has he played with this truck in the past 2 years? No! Will he play with it again after today? No! Sigh.)

The Yard Sale is actually something a friend of mine is putting together, and she has kindly invited others to sell items at her sale. I have just a few larger items in mind to add to the sale, but it will save me having to list items on Craigslist and arrange individual pickups, etc.

I'm glad to have these extra motivators to keep me focused on Stuff Elimination, because I've been looking at my calendar and there is a lot going on in the next few months. I want to continue purging through the end of the year to complete my Declutter Challenge, but I have to be realistic about the lack of available time and energy I'm going to have to devote to the project. It is probably realistic to predict that October is going to be my last 'big' selling month of the year.

Declutter Challenge April Update: The Big Report

April may be the biggest report of the year, due to my wild idea to prepare items for a consignment sale AND hold a yard sale at the same time! If that was not enough, I also had some books sell on Half.com, AND couldn't stop myself from listing just a few items on Ebay. It's been a busy month!

This month I decided to try out Ebay's 'Buy It Now' selling feature: putting some items up for sale at a flat price and making them available for 30 days. I have some nice items I thought might sell well, but that were not necessarily something that people would be excited enough to bid on and wait for an auction to end. Sometimes when I've been shopping on Ebay I've been drawn to items that I could just buy instantly--when I didn't have time or patience to wait for the auction to end to see if I won the item... or not. I sold two of the items within the first week, making at total of $20.05 after fees and shipping. Two additional items are still listed for sale for another week or so, and one of them has already sold so I will count that one in my total for May.

One of these items was a Pampered Chef Tool Turn-About that I never ended up using. I tried to sell it at a yard sale three years ago for $5, and it didn't sell. On Ebay it sold for $15! This is a great example of how certain items are more in demand depending on the marketplace. Probably few of the people at the yard sale were interested in Pampered Chef, but online I had access to many more people who were looking for brand-specific items.

I also sold two additional books at Half.com. My current inventory there is 4 books, so selling two is a big deal! I earned $15.05.

Our Yard Sale was a fun event, and profitable, too! Most of the items we sold were small household things that we no longer needed, plus a few larger items: a crib, 3 vacuum cleaners of varying functionality, an old large television set, old computer speakers, etc. Amazingly, we made $270.25! I will subtract $10 to cover costs for posterboard, marker, and stickers that I bought. This was the only cost as the advertising was all free!

Lastly, I received my check from the consignment sale, and it's time to announce the winner of my Giveaway. After many hours of preparation of our nicest reusable kid and baby items (and a bunch of cheap books), I was thrilled to recieve a total of $263.63 from the sale! This means that Alyssa is the lucky winner of a $25 Amazon Gift Card! (She guessed $261.00, long before my check arrived in the mail. Amazing!) Alyssa has been emailed to announce the win, and I need to hear back from her in the next 48 hours to issue the prize. Thanks to everyone who guessed!

April Declutter Challenge Grand Total: $558.98

As always, this amount will be applied to my loan. I'm thrilled with my progress as I have paid a total of $1,185.93 so far this year.

Does this mean that my goal to earn at least $100 per month is too low? I've been thinking about this, and I've decided that it doesn't need to be higher. The goal is enough to motivate me to sell a few things each month without feeling extreme pressure. I think I will be happy to earn a smaller amount for the month of May. I still need to finish putting my basement back together. I'm also trying to focus on a few other projects this month and we have a lot of weekend activities. I like that my goal gives me some flexibility to have a lighter month when I need it!

ETA: You can read about other's decluttering progress over at The Finer Things in Life!

Yard Sale Wrap-up

I am so glad to report that we held our yard sale over the weekend, and everything went well!

What I achieved:

• I didn't finish the final declutter areas in my Purge Process, but we still managed to sell over 200 items in our sale, including a large old TV (not digital!) that I would have had to pay $20 to recycle. We gave it away for $10, and I hope that it holds together for a few more years for the lucky purchaser!
• Most of the remaining items we carted off to Goodwill. It's a mess, but we have lots more space in the basement now.

What I learned:

• You don't need to pay for advertising! I posted a free advertisement on CraigsList three days before the sale. We also hung up a total of 9 signs in our neighborhood, leading people from two major roads to our street. I was really nervous that this wasn't going to be enough advertising, but it was fine! We had consistent traffic to our sale all morning, and continued to make a few sales after Noon while my husband was taking down the sale (after we had taken down our signs!)
• Stuff will get stolen. We had a few small items stolen: cheap jewelry and some colorful plastic cups. They weren't worth  much, but it gave me an uncomfortable feeling, that people had interacted with me and my family and had chosen to take an item rather than pay $1 for it. I tried not to let it get to me. If you're going to have a sale, keep a close watch on your valuable items! (Or sell them another way. Most of the stuff we sold was not very valuable.)
• The more the merrier. Our niece brought over her items to sell at our sale, and my friend brought some larger bikes and furniture to sell. A few neighbors brought over a few items, too. Still more neighbors stopped by to socialize, and a friend of mine was visiting from out of town, so she came over for a while, too. My son's friend came over with his dad, and the dad ended up taking the boys to the park after hanging out for a while. It was a nice community-building event that was much more fun than I expected! If you're planning a sale, get some people together to make it a more festive event!

What I recommend:

• Carry your money on your person. I made sure to have lots of small bills, and I wore them in my jacket, which has four zip-pockets total. I put $10s and $20s in one pocket, $5s, in another, and put $1 and quarters/change in the other two pockets. It worked well, although I got a little hot near midday.
• Be willing to bargain. I had some impressive hagglers come to the sale. I had to really concentrate to keep up with the offers she was making. I gave her great prices and she bought a lot of stuff. She even came back later and bought more. (I wonder what she plans to do with it all? Hold her own sale, perhaps?) I think she really liked that I was willing to haggle with her. I recommend coffee to help you keep up with the math. But if you are set on a price, stick with it. I held firm on certain items that I had decided on in advance.
• Be willing to hold items. One purchaser had a $100 bill which I was unwilling to break so that she could purchase $7 worth of items. I told her I could hold her items for an hour. She returned and ended up buying $5 of additional stuff once she broke her hundred at a nearby fast food restaurant.
• Put out an extension cord so that people can test the small appliances. This led to several sales when we could confirm that the items still worked.
• Enlist help to watch your children. (See community building above!)

How much did I make, you ask? I'm not going to say yet, as I want to wait and report all my results for the month in my April Declutter Challenge Report. I'm waiting for my consignment check to be mailed, too, and you can guess how much that total will be. The person who guesses the closest without going over the total will win a $25 Amazon Gift Card!

I'm so glad that so much of my stuff has made it to a new home, where hopefully someone is getting good use out of it! I don't think I could have a yard sale every year, but maybe in 2-3 years we'll consider holding another one. It was fun!