garage sale, thrift sale, rummage sale, or tag sale… no matter what you call it, the process always looks the same…
- spend monday-friday hauling boxes of old clothing, decorations, and toys out of the basement.
- price each item. debate between putting a $1 sticker or a $2 sticker on the old picture frame.
- spend friday evening arranging the garage, setting up tables, putting garage sale signs at strategic intersections in your neighborhood. get to bed around 1:00 or 1:30am.
- wake up at 7am on saturday for your 9am garage sale. look out your window to find scavengers already peering into your garage.
- spend all day saturday sitting on lawnchairs allowing strangers to haggle you down 50 cents on a 1 dollar item.
- wonder about your taste in home furnishings when some of your items don’t sell despite being marked down to 25 cents.
- box up all your remaining items and drive to goodwill.
- count up your earnings… $135.
- go out for dinner… spend $65.
- ask yourself, “why did we ever think this was a good idea?”
this past weekend, we held our second annual garage sale. we love getting rid of old items and creating new space in our home. and we especially love trading clutter for money. but the energy that it takes to pull off a well-organized garage sale is rarely worth the financial return. after this year’s garage sale, we packed up everything that was left and took it to the goodwill (5 large boxes full of old clothes and home decorations)… if i couldn’t sell it for 25 cents, why would i keep it in my house?
may the day come soon when i have no need to organize another garage sale…
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I completely understand where you’re coming from with the “time wasting” aspect of garage sales. However, I always enjoyed hanging out with the neighbors while they had their sales, chatting with everyone, enjoying being outside.
As far as it being a money-maker? I’d much rather just donate the items to Goodwill!
@christine – i admit that my wife enjoys organizing the garage sales much more than i. it could be a personality thing… i’m still looking forward to the day when we won’t have enough stuff in the basement to pull off a garage sale even if we wanted to.
My husband does not like holding garage sales either. I usually will set something up if I see that my neighbors are having one. Because my Goodwill items usually sit in my basement for a while, it makes it easy to get things together quick. I rarely make a lot of cash except the one year I unloaded all the baby furniture. For me it’s just the thought of getting the stuff out of my house. It just amazes me how I end up with so much stuff when I do not shop a lot to begin with. Maybe what I thought was useful and necessary one year became clutter and unused the next. I am not a big shopper to begin with and try to keep things minimal, but holidays and birthdays tend to wreck my home!
My time spent organizing and having the yard sale is usually worth more than what I would make! No more for me thanks! A couple times a year, I take stuff to Good Will or Salvation Army or a mission thrift store. Ask for a tax deduction receipt. It usually benefits you more than the yard sale.
I agree with Marci… Never held a garage sell. never really want to. Have sold a couple of big items on Craigslist… but all regular household items and clothes I pack up and right to goodwill.. get my Tax receipt and get my money back from Uncle Sam….
Example – If you claim a shirt is worth $10 – how much would you get back at a garage sell? ( I don’t really know – $1?, $.50?) I calculate that I get about 25% back on my deductions from taxes… = $2.50…
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