Our huge garage sale is coming closer! Every year we have a big, huge garage sale at our home. It’s always the Friday and Saturday of Memorial Day weekend and it is always packed with happy shoppers and great treasures.
This is the 12th year (I think) that we are having the sale; we only took off 1 year during my battle with breast cancer. We sell so much stuff, see so many people and have such a great time at the sale but it is a lot of work. A lot.
Our rural setting allows us to spread out and we utilize our 30 x 80 building for the sale as well as the area outside the building.
Inside part of the sale, 2015
My dad and father in law are in charge of parking (yes, there are that many cars and we learned quickly that without help guiding people for parking things get too crazy.). Jim mans the outside area with the help of 2 nephews and then the rest of us (my mom, mother in law, sister in law and I) man the inside sales. Our family is amazing and we couldn’t do this without them. (We do provide food, a comfy spot to sleep and adult refreshments too …. as a bribe!).
Here is most of the crew:
Notice that we all wear matching t-shirts that we provide (names on the back) so that shoppers can spot us and ask for help if they need it. Customer service is really important; we want people to have fun at our sale and come back again.
We also provide our shoppers with complimentary coffee and juice as well as cookies during the 2 days we are open. People love that, and so do the kids. It probably costs us less than $30 to supply the freebies and we enjoy doing it.
So, as the sale is approaching are you wondering how we get ready for it? Well this is what the building looks like now:
Eeek, right?
Last weekend we spent both days moving things around and getting the non-sale items out of the building. This included our riding lawn mowers, bikes, chipper/shredder, etc. All the stuff not for sale.
After work this week the plan is to keep prepping so that this coming weekend the biggest job left to do is place the tables and clothing racks and tent so we can start arranging the items. All the stuff you see in the boxes and bags is already priced, thankfully! That is a tip I’d like to share; during the year if you are pulling things aside for a future garage sale, take the time to price the item right then using masking tape and a marker. Then pack the item away; this is a huge time saver as you are frantically getting ready for the sale! (Trust me, for years my mom suggested this to me and for years I ignored her. Then I tried it. Life changing!).
We invite family members to bring their items to the sale and set them out. We don’t require them to work the sale, and we pay them 100% of what the items sell for. It makes our sale even bigger and shoppers love that. Plus it adds variety and helps them earn some extra money as well. We do have a couple of requirements though …. the biggest is that their items must be tagged with clear easy to read tags. If it is clothing, it must have the size on the tag. Absolutely no stupid small stickers that fall off and are hard to read. Everyone has an initial so when the customers check out we can tell who is supposed to get credit for the items in the sale. I think last year we paid money out to 11 different people!
Here is an example of one of our nice big clothing tags:
Another rule is that is must be clean – nothing yucky. No pet hair, no ugly spots or smells, etc. Since our family is super awesome, we don’t have issues with this rule!
Notice how the tags jump out at you when you shop our sale. We also like signage, lots of signs explaining what things are, where they are and the pricing. Simple but effective!
We find that putting in a lot of time before the sale equals success. The coming 10 days are going to be brutal, but it will be worth it.
I just pulled out 50+ pieces of clothing that need to be tagged….where is my tape and Sharpie?
Stay tuned for more garage sale progress, and if you have garage sale tips please post them below.
