Yardsale Success Part II...

Having a yard sale is much like giving birth to an infant. It's time consuming to prepare for, awful to go through yet when it is over the bad memories eventually fade and you are ready to do it again. I am not yet at that phase. In fact, I've been so traumatized by my most recent yard sale that I am convinced I will hang it up forever.

With that said I will first warn you that there will be no Yard Sale Success Part III. This is it. Once I write about this I will move on to more things that don't cause me to have post traumatic nightmares.

Once I was finished with tagging everything and organizing items into accessible boxes I packed up my stuff (2 FULL van loads) and hauled it all out to my dads. This took 2 full days, as I was also helping out my step mom with her own yard sale stuff. The following picture is the before and after of just the clothing items. I still had a lot of other *stuff* that my mom and my mother in law contributed.

I decided the day before the start of the weekend that I would be super crafty and I made a couple of aprons for holding money. One for myself and one for my step mom. Mostly my motive for this is because in the past I've always just kept my money in a zipper bag that I was notorious for leaving around. This way I could not lose my stash of cash.

A couple of extra helpful pointers for a successful tag sale is to collect your wal-mart/grocery bags for a couple of months before. People love to have bags to hold their items and the more they can hold the more they can buy. Another important pointer is to get about $40 in lower bills and about $5 in quarters so that you can give out change. And be certain to keep count of how much you started with and subtract it from what you made in the end. This way you don't get too excited if you think you made $50.00 when you started out with $40 only to forget to separate your money.

My own yard sale was overall successful. In the many years this event has occurred we've been fortunate not to have experienced weather interferences. However, this year, it rained the entire day Friday. This was not a good start because in the past Friday's have always been my money making day. I generally make about 75% of my total on Friday, partially because many Amish come into town on this day and another adjoining neighborhood has their big yard sale on Saturday.

Nevertheless, we sucked it up and went on with the show. We used my dad's car-port as well as his canopy to help keep our stuff dry, but it was an ongoing drizzle that just made everything damp, including our stuff. I was lucky I pulled a $200 day with all of the circumstances.

Thankfully, Saturday turned out to be beautiful. The weather was perfect for a yard sale. We were able to move the show to the actual *yard*.

In the end my total collection of money (I can't call it a profit because of course I spent much, much more on the actual products) was about $520. I say about because the kids bummed at least $20 off of me for food, ice cream and yard sale shopping for themselves. So I didn't include that amount. This was a bit low, but considering the rain on Friday I was pleased. Also, I left my dad's with just 1/8 of what I came with.

Just 3 days later I am still a bit traumatized by the event, mostly because of little old women who want a $40 Ralph Lauren sweater that still has price tags on it for 50 cents. At this point I am convinced I will just start to sell most of my stuff on eBay, but in a year I will likely change my mind.

Yardsale Success Part I...

Every year, since my twins were colicky infants, I have gone along with my entire family to Gatlinburg Tennessee for a fall getaway. Initially, my dad would fork out the cash to cover most of my expenses. But several years ago, after 911 and the stock market crashes, that halted. Sadly for me, an at home mom with minimal income I had to come up with some clever solutions to raise the money for a trip I wasn't willing to give up.

My dad's neighborhood has traditionally held an annual yard sale gala every second weekend in September since I was a small child. This is no typical yard sale event. People come from all over the state of Kentucky and the neighborhood folks take full advantage. Some people cook hot dogs and brats, other's provide doughnuts and coffee, my own children have set up tremendous bake sales with much success.

And I use the proceeds of my yard sale earnings to partially fund our annual Gatlinburg trip. Last year I set a record and earned $600. I'm going to share with you just how I do this.

Again, I'm not type A, so I don't care if my house is a disaster for a day or two. So let me show you just what I have to endure for at least a couple of days.

This is a small section of my downstairs. I start with collecting everything I've packed away over the last year and spread it out onto the floor and spray it with Febreze. This gets the *boxed away* odors out without causing me another weeks worth of laundry to do. Then I situate myself in the middle along with my handy dandy yard sale kit.

Here are the keys to my success. I'll explain more in a bit.

• Tag Gun
• Retractable Sharpie
• Print out tags that are super cute (see images below)
• Hangers, lots of 'em
• Vibrant signage
• Extra large paper clips

My tag gun is my best friend this time of year. Anyone wanting to achieve a successful yard sale MUST label all of their items. People will just walk away if they are not labeled or try to negotiate a price that is unlikely unfair. I got my idea for tag gunning my children's clothes several years ago when my Mother of Twins Club made it mandatory for everyone selling in their bi-annual yard sale event to have things tagged with a tag gun. Although I've only shopped at this event I found this extremely helpful and professional. So I have stolen this idea and made a few enhancements. Tag guns are extremely cheap. I think I got mine on eBay for about $5.00.

A RETRACTABLE sharpie is best for labeling the prices and sizes on each tag. The bold lettering looks professional and I suggest retractable because putting a lid back on a marker every single time you mark an item is exhausting.

Ultra cute tags. This is new this year for myself. In the past I've simply just cut a piece of index card into half and just wrote on it the price and size. This year I've gone a bit further and created some adorable tags.

Here are a few examples of my tags for my clothing. In truth I can't tell you if people will be excited about the tags or simply think I'm a psychopath idiot who definitely has no life. So I will update that in Part III (yes, it's gonna take 3 parts for my yard sale tips!) Nevertheless, my tags are definitely appealing to at least myself!

Hangers. I never toss out a hanger. I love all hangers. Every hanger that I get with my kids stuff I save. And I use hundreds for my clothes. Clothes on hangers sell much better than those tossed onto a table or into boxes. Last year, for example, after the first day of the yard sale I organized my items. Since I had available hangers (I always take my hangers back) I went through some of my boxes of stuff and began hanging up stuff. The funny thing is that in the box I priced the items for 50 cents. When I hung them up I priced them for $1.00. And they sold.

Signs. People need direction. When you go shopping in a store there are signs for everything. This rack is Hannah Montana, this rack is on sale, this rack... I separate all of the stuff I can not put onto hangers into individual boxes. Everything in the boxes are tagged but I also place a sign above the box with 2 paper clips letting people know what is in there before they start to dig around. Stay tuned for part II, I will show some of my signs.