Preparing for a garage sale is a lot of hard work. Unless you have done it numerous times, you are more than likely starting from scratch. While there is not necessarily a right or wrong way to have a garage sale, there are a lot of things you can do to ensure that your garage sale is successful. It all begins with the preparations.
Gather Your Items
The first step in preparing for the garage sale, is to gather all of your items together and put them in one spot. At this point, you don’t have to separate anything, you just want to put all of the items together in one central, easy to access, location. While gathering items, look around you. Look at art on the wall, glance inside drawers and cabinets, look under beds, in closets, and in the attic or basement. At our house, we use small stickers to place on a cabinet or drawer that we have already looked inside. Visually this lets us know that we have already gone through that location and found everything we wanted to get rid of. This is also a great time to jot down notes for any locations you’d like to come back to and organize later. Remember, when you are looking for things to sell, one man’s trash is another man’s treasure. You might be surprised at what people are looking for at garage sales.
Once your items are gathered together, it’s time to get to work.
Clean It All Up
It’s time to begin the most crucial process. Cleaning the items. You will get much more money for items if you spend a little time cleaning them up first. I recommend using a Mr. Clean dry erase marker for anything that is safe. We have had a lot of success with this product, removing stains and marks we never thought would come off again. Be sure and clean in nooks and cranny’s, as well as removing the dead batteries from items and then test them with fresh batteries to be sure the item works. The cleaning process can take several hours to complete, so I recommend doing it over a period of days. You might even wish to clean as you go, if you don’t have a lot of stuff to sell.
Keep watching the garage sale section of the frugal living blog for great tips, and techniques to make your garage sale experience, whether selling or buying, a frugal good time!
Related Articles:
Garage Sale Season Has Arrived
Garage Sales: How And Where To Find Them
Why Should I Have A Garage Sale?
Collecting Items For a Garage Sale