Everybody loves a good yard sale. / Image: kirinqueen/Flickr/CC BY-SA

Spring is here, and summer’s right around the corner. It’s time to declutter and spend some time in the fresh air. What better way to do that than by having a yard sale and making a few dollars in the process? With a little planning, the experience can be more profitable and more enjoyable.

Check the weather

Nothing spoils a yard sale faster than a rain shower! Keep your eye on the 10-day forecast before you schedule or do any advertising.

Advertising

The more people who know about your sale, the more traffic you will get. Craigslist is a great place to post an ad. It is free and will likely be seen by more people than a newspaper ad. While you are at it, post your ad on websites like yardsalesearch.com. And don’t underestimate the value of neighborhood signs. Colorful signs on cardboard or posterboard get attention and add homemade flavor that appeals to local buyers. Remember, people in cars have only a few seconds to get the message, so keep it simple and don’t forget the arrows pointing toward your sale!

Group similar items

Displaying similar items together keeps down the clutter and provides a more pleasant shopping experience. When you pick the items from your home that you want to include in the sale, you may want to start by grouping similar items in the same boxes. This will make it easier when it comes time to set up your sale.

Keep it uncluttered

Have plenty of tables so that items can be be displayed in a clean, uncluttered fashion. An exception might be boxes of loose, similar items like baby clothes. But even in that case, several smaller bins make it easier to see what is for sale than one large one.

Have plenty of change

Nothing will cost you sales faster than not having proper change. Quarters and $1 bills will be the most helpful, but depending on your prices and number of items for sale, you may also need dimes, nickels and $5 and $10 bills. A cash box with dividers for different denominations will keep you organized and make sales go more quickly.

Price things right

Some items may have sentimental value to you, but that means nothing to your shopper. She or he is there for a bargain and for a fun time outdoors. Often, more money can be made and more items cleared out if you keep the prices low. If you are going after top dollar, you may want to consider foregoing a yard sale and opt for Craigslist or eBay instead.

Sources

MSNBC
Frugal Dad
Get Rich Slowly
KTUL

He didn't put his sale on Craigslist, so Yard Sale Treasure Map users can't find him. (Photo: wikipedia.org)

Yard sales tend to begin in the summer when the weather’s fine, but depending upon where you live, they can go on well into the fall. Sure, the winds may blow cold and the leaves may coat the ground, but that never stops a true bargain hunter with a yard sale treasure map. The true bargain hunter keeps their eyes on the prize when it comes to value, and garage sales are a great place to find deals. As long as attention is paid to the quality and state of repair of the items in question for purchase, the yard sale hunter can come out ahead without having to depend upon same day cash loans.

Do You Plan Your Garage Sale Adventures?

If you live in a town of even medium size and would like to spend your weekends scoping out yard sales, it pays to plan. Traipsing about willy nilly from one place to the next is a recipe for quickly running out of both time and money. If you have an idea of what neighborhoods tend to have the best stuff (a little garage sale research is necessary here) and plan your mileage economically (not bouncing back and forth between uptown and downtown, for example), you’re on the right track.

But you’ll need to begin by knowing where the sales are at least a day or two ahead of time. Looking for road signs and reading newspapers are two old-school options here, but why not enter the 21^st century and use technology to improve your experience? There are few tools that do this out there right now that can match the power of the Web site Yard Sale Treasure Map.

A Yard Sale Treasure Map For Bargain Hunters

Yard Sale Treasure Map is a free service that scours Craigslist (everybody uses it) and maps out the sales in your city with a Google Maps interface. Select the sales that seem best to you and Yard Sale Treasure Map will even allow you to create a personalized map to the discount treasures you can find out there. Conveniently, Yard Sale Treasure map even predicts the most optimal route for you to take to get there and the order in which you should visit them, thanks to the Google Maps interface. If you want to be even more specific, search sales by the items that will be for sale (hopefully your neighbors took the time to list them) by category.

New Stuff is Expensive

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Why don’t you use Yard Sale Treasure Map and see how the bargains help your bottom line. Same day payday loans may be something you depend upon less as a result, and you’ll be doing something green by recycling old stuff and keeping plastics out of the landfill.

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