The Yard Sale

Yard sales. Some people love going to them for the deals...some love the hunt...some very rare people love having them. I fall into all three catergories. Maybe I am a glutten for punishment, but I have to admit that it is thrilling for me to get the items ready, price them, interact with the people and ultimately, make the deal. The cash is nice, too.

There are two reason people don't like throwing yard sales.

1. It's just too much work. Just the thought of getting everything together and priced is enough for most people to just say forget it...that's not to mention the eventual clean up!

2. Parting with one's stuff is hard. I struggle with that myself.

A co-worker of Becky's didn't want to deal with either, so I was recruited to take on the challenge. After all, I'm not above hard work, and it's not my stuff, so I said yes. It seems she had sold her house, and just didn't want to move the remaining stuff. With this information, I knew I had the green light to be aggressive with their stuff to just get it sold, lest it be swept away to Goodwill.

After my initial consultation to see what she had, I was left thinking we would make some cash with some bigger items, a couch, a love seat, a refridgerator...but there wasn't much more to sell. Just some knick-knacks, some odds and ends. Then the word came down the week of the sale that a few items were no longer in the sale.

The couch, the love seat and the refridgerator.

Ouch! I was wondering if we would even make $100 total. I scrounged around the house for some stuff to both buffer the sale (to make me some extra cash), and some stuff to appeal to a younger generation as the sellers are an older couple, and had older stuff. Gotta know your audience.

I decided I would only need one night to arrange and price the small amount of stuff I saw in their garage. So, the Friday before the Saturday sale I loaded up my tables, a few boxes of records, some DVD's and CD's and a box of stuff from our yard sales past and I headed to Shelbyville to get the sale ready.

I arrived at 6pm.

I was told that the new homeowers would be at the house painting, which made me a little nervous. I didn't want to bother them, of course, and I was hoping they were nice people. My first impression wasn't promising. As I approached the house, a muscular, older man was exiting the house. I introduced myself and commented how weird it was for me to be having a yard sale at his house.

Him: "Don't matter to me, it's not my house, it's my son's."

Oh no, he seemed gumpy. No prob...I'll stay in the garage, keep my head down and get the job done. I passed through the house without much talk, and opened the garage door only to be shocked with what I saw.

It looked like the entire garage had exploded with clothes, boxes, baskets, and miscellaneous items. Did I mention this was a two and a half car garage? I couldn't even SEE the floor. The small pile of stuff I saw a few weeks previously had multiplied into more of a mountain! I quickly dug in, cause I knew it was going to be a long night.

I began with a sort, and piles began to form. Clothes, glassware, bags, shoes, furniture, candles. The vision was forming, but the amount of stuff was bordering on overwhelming. Several times I had to just step back and think about the big picture. It seemed I was just pushing things from one side to the other, so I decided the sort was over and the pricing needed to begin.

Before I marked my first item, the new homeowners came out to the garage. I braced myself for the worst, but to my surprise, they were extremely nice. The couple were probably a few years younger than I am, and they were super friendly, offering me gatorade and pizza. They browsed around the piles a bit, picked out a few things they wanted to buy, and left for the night. That was a relief!

I grabbed out a table from the car and made room against one of the garage walls. I cranked out the christmas items, then pushed all the bigger items to the front of the garage knowing they would line the driveway. A work space in the back of the garage transformed into my glassware area. Shelves on either wall turned into a make shift "wares" area (wares being all the little knick-knack stuff. Pots, pans, small lamps, etc. Electronics took a shelf. Baskets spread out under the shelves.

It was now after 10 pm. The garage looked like it was barely touched. I began to panic a bit, thinking it would not get done.

That's when I made the executive decision to go "auction-style" with stuff...that is, I threw similar stuff into boxes and marked it "ENTIRE BOX FOR ..." whatever price I deemed fit. This sped things up a bit. But what was I going to do with Mt. Clothes Fuji over in the corner?? Forget it, move on.

Finally, at 2 am, I pulled the plug. Everything was priced, and with another hour or so the next morning, I was confident I could make it happen. Knowing that yard sales always have early birds (and the sale was set to begin at 8 am), I decided I needed to leave Columbus at 6 am, it is about a 35 minute drive to Shelbyville after all, so that would give me an hour and a half before the official start time.

I was in bed at 2:45 am, up at 5:15 am. Adreniline was going to have to get me through. I arrived at the sale spot at 6:45 and began pulling stuff out to the drive. It was a controlled chaos. I didn't have time to waste, so I just grabbed and pushed. To my amazement, no one showed up until 7:45 (I learned later the seller put "no early sales" in the newspaper ad, and people actually listened.)

I didn't get the dvd's, cd's or records out before the flood gates opened, but people didn't seem to care. They dug right in and looked in the boxes anyway until I could get them set properly. I had one more HUGE PROBLEM.

Mt. Clothes Fuji.

I brought my saw horses and a flat board because I decided I was just going to throw them on the table (to get them off the ground) and employ a clothing tactic that had worked great for me and Becky in the past: Fill a bag for a $1. That's right, you cram whatever you can into a bag, and pay a $1. Clothes typically don't sell very well, unless you have baby clothes, so this was a way to cut the pile down and make some cash. Two problems with this plan quickly arose.

1. There were a lot of bulky XL sweaters and the likes, which meant you would probably get, at most, 2 or 3 things in a bag. Not good for business.

2. I didn't have time in the sea of customers to even set up the saw horses before people started hustling me for prices.

I had to think quick. There was only one thing to do.

"Anything in that pile is 25 cents a piece." I exclaimed.

And thus began the greatest mosh pit I have ever seen for clothes at a yard sale. Women began literally DIVING into the pile that sat on the garage floor. It was unreal! Tell me the last time you saw people at a yard sale attack clothes like that! I must have make $50 or $60 on clothes! Remarkable considering they were 25 cents a piece, that's 200 - 300 articles of clothing! This one old lady filled two huge boxes...spent $20 on clothes herself!

The sale pushed on, and I didn't even have a change to breathe until 10:15. Someone bought all my dvd's for $100, so that put some cash in my pocket. (FYI...I sold 7 records and 2 cd's...business was bad for those items!) People sporatically came and went, spending a few bucks here and there. To my amazement, those auction-styled boxes made 3 or 4 times what I had marked on them, because people didn't want the whole box, they just wanted to pick stuff out. I was also surprised that at the end, I only had a third or less of Mt. Clothes Fuji left.

With the sale over, I packed everything up and put it in the corner of the garage, nice and neat. The garage that was a day before filled, was now empty save for a line of stuff across one wall. Not too bad, if I do say so myself.

In the end, not counting the $100 from the dvd's, I made $342 for the seller. She graciously gave me half. My final take was $270. Not too shabby for 2 days hard labor! We both got some money, she didn't have to deal with the selling of her stuff. It was a win-win!

If you want me to run a yard sale for you with great results, or have stuff you want to sell on eBay, just drop me a note, I think this might be my nitch!!