海角大神

You鈥檝e gone through your clutter. You鈥檝e sold off a lot of valuable individual items that you don鈥檛 want any more. You鈥檝e also eliminated some of your collections by selling them off in bulk.

But you鈥檙e still left with a giant pile of stuff. What do you do with the remaining miscellany?

Have a yard sale, of course.

Putting together a yard sale really isn鈥檛 that hard. It just takes some time and some planning in advance. Here are some of the steps you can take to recoup some cash from the things you鈥檝e bought and no longer wish to use.

First, pick a date well in advance. I suggest using an entire weekend for it, including at least Saturday and Sunday and possibly Friday evening. This will give you time to promote it a bit, because the more promotion you do, the more people you鈥檒l have browsing your stuff and the more sales you鈥檒l make.

So, how do you promote it? In the past, I鈥檝e hung up signs in the neighborhood, put a notice out on Craigslist, and also put a notice in two different local newspapers. My total cost was less than $10, but the turnout was tremendous. I鈥檓 quite confident I made far more than my $10 back.

Second, price items to sell, but price them clearly. I suggest getting a bunch of colored stickers in various colors (red, yellow, blue, green, brown, etc.). Have a sign listing various prices 鈥� $1 for yellow, $2 for brown, $0.50 for red, and so on 鈥� and then put an appropriate sticker on each item you鈥檙e interested in selling.

Don鈥檛 price items too high. Remember, this is a yard sale. People are coming to look for bargains and if they don鈥檛 find them, they鈥檒l walk. These are items you couldn鈥檛 sell any other way, so don鈥檛 be greedy with them or you鈥檒l just close your garage door and still have a bunch of things you don鈥檛 know what to do with.

One great tactic is to have three or four different versions of the price sheets. Have one that says something like:

Red 鈥� $0.25
聽Blue 鈥� $0.50
聽Green 鈥� $1.00
聽Yellow 鈥� $2.00
聽Brown 鈥� $5.00

Prices will lower on Saturday at 2 PM, so come back then for bigger discounts (or buy now to make sure you get the item you want)!

At 2 PM on Saturday, replace that sign with one that says:

Red 鈥� $0.15
聽Blue 鈥� $0.35
聽Green 鈥� $0.75
聽Yellow 鈥� $1.50
聽Brown 鈥� $3.00

Prices will lower on Sunday morning, so come back then for bigger discounts (or buy now to make sure you get the item you want)!

Then, on Sunday morning, hang up a sign with even lower prices.

When we tried this in the past, we didn鈥檛 see much of a slowdown in sales throughout the first day, but we did see people coming back on Sunday to look for more items that they might not have otherwise bought. People understood that the Sunday items would be picked over, so they wanted to lock in things that they wanted, but big bargain hunters were happy to come back the next day.

A final tactic: cooperate with your neighbors. Allow them to put items into your yard sale and you鈥檒l handle the rest for a 50% commission on the sale. All they have to do is come up with the items and (if they care) what they want to sell them for. This will earn you more money for little additional effort. You can also plan the yard sale with neighbors, so you can take turns manning the tables and split the proceeds.

Yard sales are a great way to turn excess clutter into extra cash, and that鈥檚 a win for everyone involved.

This post is part of a yearlong series called 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap (Revisited),鈥� in which I鈥檓 revisiting the entries from my book 鈥�365 Ways to Live Cheap,鈥� which is available at Amazon and at bookstores everywhere. 聽