Our yard sale yields $300.

$300 is a lot of money for me to make at a yard sale. I usually only make about $80-$100. I don't have yard sales to get rich; I am just trying to de-clutter our home. They are also social events for me. My neighbors participate and the neighborhood becomes very lively. It is usually a lot of fun. Our neighborhood holds a yard sale every year and it usually just runs on a Saturday in May. This year it was moved to April and the event was Thursday, Friday and Saturday. Homeowners could participate in 1,2 or all 3 days, depending on their schedules. I was able to do all three days from about 7:30am - 1 pm each day. The weather was beautiful and people turned out in droves all 3 days. I think people were excited to get out after a loooong cold winter.

All winter long, I foraged through closets, drawers, the basement and the garage looking for items that were no longer used or needed. As I found items I put them in boxes in the garage. The boxes became overwhelming, so ticketing every item was out of the question. Instead I used cardboard boxes to hold similar items like baby clothing and wrote a price on the flaps of the boxes. This saved a lot of time. I originally put the boxes on the ground thinking that people would just go through them, but I noticed nobody was taking the time to look in the boxes. I moved the boxes on top of tables and then the items really started to sell.

We didn't have any big ticket items. The $300 was made mostly from .25 - $3.00 items. I had alot of new baby clothes with tags still on that I priced at $3. They sold very well. I think my highest ticketed price was for a very old leather Dooney & Bourke handbag. After checking on ebay I put $15 on the bag. No one even looked at the bag on Thursday or Friday so I intended on lowering the price on Saturday, but a lady beat me to it and asked if I would take $10. Sold...that bag had been in my closet for years. When I pulled it out of my closet this winter I found a restaurant coupon inside with an expiration date of 1998. I'm not sure why I held onto it for so long.

We were able to de-clutter the house a little, but de-cluttering seems to be an ongoing challenge for us. My cousin invited me to participate in her neighborhood yard sale in July, so I think I will go through the closets again, now that I am inspired by the wad of cash sitting on my kitchen counter.