"The point of a yard sale is to turn Stuff into Cash."
I applied this to-the-bone wisdom to our own yard sale last weekend. With few exceptions, my Stuff is found, given to me by friends, or thrift shop finds that I couldn't upsell.
The Upside: I actually make profit on my sales.
The Downside: I still have to run the sale.
This Saturday was shockingly beautiful, the kind of day that sends New Yorkers into tree-hugging ecstasy. That fact may have worked against me, but at least we weren't shivering and miserable.
This is how the yard looked at the sale's start.
If you recognize your own curbed items in these photos, all I can say is, "Thanks! You're helping to send my kids to Europe."
This year, I tried something new: NO PRICE TAGS. Two happy results: 1. Setup was fast and easy.
2. I had fewer haggle battles. I just asked buyers, "What's a fair price?" Except for one gentleman who wanted to buy a flawless Kate Spade bag for a buck, buyers offered a sensible yard sale price, and I took it.
Plus, I gave liberal "Gifts With Purchase" like costume jewelry and clothing.
This young scrapper--and I mean that literally--took three crates of marble tiles off my hands for $20, plus he removed a pile of "junk metal" from the side of the house to sell to a scrap yard. Win-Win, right?
At the end of the day, we had about $300 more for the travel fund; Tarrytown's The Cherry Door and The Nearly New Shop had a vanload of luggage, nick-knacks, and very nice clothing to sell in their not-for-profit stores; and we had space in the basement to walk around again.
I curbed some items, making sure to post pics and directions on Craigslist and on our local Facebook page, 10591. By morning, they were gone.
For the past few months, I was holding back on nighttime cruising, since I had jammed our space with so many objects. Post-sale, I felt no such compunction. I came home with a new vanload of finds on Sunday.
You know what? Friends who missed out on those yard sale Lacrosse sticks asked me to look for more. And because I am a Magical Badger, I found them on my first night out.
Ahhh, The Badger is happy again.
Copyright 2014, Tanya Monier
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