Successful Garage Sale Tips For Sellers That Want To Sell

Are you looking for garage sale tips so you’re as prepared as you can be for your upcoming garage sale?

I must first start this article by saying I love getting rid of things! It’s less to clean, less to organize, and less stress for me.

This article is for people who want to offload their items. You are motivated to clear your house of (what you consider to be) junk.

Let’s get started with the garage sale tips!

Garage Sale Tip #1 – Follow The Rules

Before you invest a ton of your valuable time in prepping your garage sale, I would check to make sure I’m following everyone’s rules.

Check with your HOA to make sure you’re not going to upset anyone by holding your own personal garage sale. Perhaps your neighborhood only allows one annual community yard sale, which is great to know!

Also make sure you’re following any rules for City or County permit requirements. This will take a little bit of research on your end, but most likely no more than a few minutes. It could cost you if you don’t follow the rules!

I included this important garage sale tip at the top of the list for a reason.

You do not want to get started on this journey without following the proper rules and restrictions.

What Are You Selling?

Picking out items to put in the garage sale will take the largest portion of your time.

Anything is worth selling. Even if you think it’s not worthy enough for $1, add it to your garage sale.

If you think the item is not in good condition and you’d rather not display it, don’t hesitate to make a trip to your local church or Goodwill and offload it.

The more items you have in your yard sale, the more people are going to stop and take a look.

The way I start out is by going through my house and asking myself if I’ve used it in the last year. If I haven’t, it goes in the garage sale.

Check out “50 items to sell around the house” if you think you don’t have much worth selling.

Note that some of your items may be too expensive for a garage sale or you could get significantly more by selling particular items online. If you’re in doubt, do some research on eBay or specialty websites to see what your particular item could go for.

Leave No Room Untouched

Be organized with your garage sale.

Don’t start planning the week before the big day. You need time to get this right and put out as much stuff as you can.

Create a game plan so that you have sufficient time to go through each room in the house.

You certainly cannot tackle this in one day. I suggest giving yourself a month to go room by room, depending on how much stuff you have that you don’t need.

So create a calendar. Perhaps print out a blank full page calendar.

Now every other day, work on something. A closet could very easily take up a full day.

This is your opportunity to not only remove things from the closet and put in the garage sale pile, but also to organize what (hopefully little) is left.

Reward yourself along the way. Perhaps you finished going through your bedroom in three hours and you’re thrilled with your pile that is going towards the garage sale. Pamper yourself by spending the next 30 minutes binging Love is Blind on Netflix or doing your nails.

Breaking up rooms on your “garage sale to-do” calendar will make this task less stressful. Plus you’re less likely to miss anything if you’re keeping track of what you’ve accomplished.

I created a garage sale calendar based upon my own home and what I know I need to focus on. Check it out for inspiration with creating your own:

Getting Your Kids’ Buy In

Please allow me to share a personal story with you.

I was 10 years old and my parents decided to have a garage sale. I thought that it sounded cool, but I didn’t want to be involved. They arranged what day it was going to be and I went to a friend’s house and played.

The mom of my friend went to my parents’ garage sale and purchased who knows what.

She came back to the house and showed us what she had purchased.

Then she held up a stuffed animal that I hadn’t played with in over 2 years.

I cried.

The mom felt so bad that she gave me the stuffed animal back. I happily took it back home and never played with it again.

Moral of the story (besides I was completely ridiculous): Get your kids’ buy in. As much as you want to, don’t swoop in and start grabbing items from their rooms or play room.

Tell them that you’re having a garage sale and you would love to give other children the opportunity to play with the toys that they have outgrown. As they get older and more birthdays and holidays come and go, they will quickly replace these items with more age appropriate ones. However, space is lacking and it’s not very fair for unused toys to be sitting around collecting dust.

If they won’t budge, have them watch Toy Story. 😄

Still not getting much participation from the kids? Try tactics like “let’s pick out 20 items together” or “let’s set you up a lemonade stand during the garage sale and you can keep all the money”.

I believe that letting go of things is important to teach at a young age.

Material possessions will come and go.

Time And Day Commitment

Have you picked your date yet?

I suggest finding out if your neighborhood does an annual (or occasional) neighborhood garage sale. You may initially think that you don’t want to compete with your neighbors for sales and that’s fair. However, the crowds is what you’re after.

So many more people will drive into your neighborhood if they know multiple houses are having garage sales.

Plus, the advertising side of things will be done for you.

If your neighborhood does not have a garage sale date, could you possibly talk a few of your neighbors into having one with you?

If not, at least pick a date for when your garage sale will be (solo or not) and stick with it. Place it on your handy garage sale calendar so you can hold yourself accountable to that date.

I would suggest planning to have a two day garage sale if you have many items. Friday being day one and Saturday for day two. You could slash prices on day two if you’re serious about offloading some of the items left towards the end.

As for time, I would pick 6:00am (and I am not an early person). Do your own research in your area and see if others are starting up their garage sales earlier/later.

Advertise Without Spending Money

Posting on Social Media will get the job done.

Do some research on local garage sale Facebook or Next Door groups.

Join these groups a month or so before your big day. Start researching how others are posting and noting what other people advertise that sparks interest or more comments.

What could you offer to make your garage sale stand out from others?

Some ideas:

• Over 200 Items
• Baby Necessities
• Tools
• Lawn Care Supplies
• Toddler and Children’s clothing for as little as $1 each
• Motivated sellers – All must go!

People love photos. If you can showcase some of the items you will have at the garage sale, be sure to include them in your post.

Have Change Ready

You’ll need plenty of ones, fives, tens, and maybe even some twenties for your garage sale depending on how you’re pricing your items.

If you have $0.25 or $0.50 items, make sure you have quarters as well.

You do not want to have to make a run to the bank during the beginning of the day because you didn’t have enough small bills. Even worse, what if you can’t make a sale because you ran out of change?

I would have the following as a guide:

• Three rolls of quarters ($10 each for a total of $30)
• $300 in ones
• $200 in fives
• $200 in tens
• $100 in twenties

Does this sound too aggressive? I would rather have too much in cash on me than not enough.

If you’re tight on cash, slash these numbers in half.

I feel like I’ve seen a movie in my youth where someone stole money from a garage sale bank. I also have trust issues.

That being said, I like to keep an apron on me during the garage sale. I’ll keep the majority of the cash I have in the house so my apron isn’t bulging with ones.

I feel safer this way and I would suggest it for others as well.

Amazon has some super cheap aprons. Plus they are cute.

Garage Sale Side Tip: Make sure the doors to your house are locked while you’re outside working your event.

Digital Payments

You don’t want to miss a great sale because your buyer didn’t have any cash (or not enough cash) on them.

Accepting all types of digital payments can only help you.

Make sure you’re ready to accept payments digitally through Venmo, PayPal, or Cash App.

Garage Sale Signs

I wouldn’t spend a ton of money here. I’ve seen Garage Sale signs close to $20 each which is just ridiculous.

Check out some cheap options on Amazon.

If you’re crafty (Full discloser: I’m not), create your own sign.

If your house is further to the back of your neighborhood, make sure you have signs along the way that guide your potential buyer.

I’m not a bedazzler so I utilize other ways to make my signs stand out and attract more attention. A great way to do this is to attach a couple of loud balloons to your signs or wind spinners.

Garage Sale Playlist

Silence is boring! You want your visitors to be having the best time possible.

Let’s keep people around while they’re shopping your stuff with music.

Here’s a list of upbeat tracks that fit most ages:

• Happy – Pharrell Williams
• Shake it off – Taylor Swift
• Good Vibrations – The Beach Boys
• Can’t Stop the Feeling – Justin Timberlake
• Born to be Wild – Steppenwolf
• Walking on Sunshine – Katrina & The Waves
• Eye of the Tiger – Survivor
• September – Earth, Wind & Fire
• 24k Magic – Bruno Mars
• Music for a Sushi Restaurant – Harry Styles
• Thriller – Michael Jackson
• Free Fallin’ – Tom Petty
• Cotton Eye Joe – Rednex
• Dancing Queen – ABBA
• Let’s Go Crazy – Prince
• 9 to 5 – Dolly Parton
• Moves Like Jagger – Maroon 5
• Espresso – Sabrina Carpenter
• Jessie’s Girl – Rick Springfield
• YMCA – Village People

Prepare Your Negotiation Skills

You’ve got a lot of stuff to sell in a somewhat short period of time. You came here knowing the title of this article is “Garage Sale Tips for Sellers That Want To Sell”. So basically I’m going to assume that you care a lot about getting this stuff gone.

Establish some “rules” for yourself so you know how you’re going to respond when someone wants to negotiate.

Rule Examples:

• No more than 1/2 of the price of an item during the first 4 hours of Day one.
• Day Two – Anything goes. I don’t want to carry this stuff back inside.
• I will not go down more than 50% on any furniture pieces.
• I’m willing to make deals to people taking multiple clothing pieces to hopefully get them to take more.

There are some examples. Obviously, there are going to be some on-the-spot negotiations taking place.

You need to have a talk with yourself and see what your main goal of this garage sale is. If it’s to make money and offload stuff (which I assume it is), I suggest letting things go at the first offer someone makes.

You’ve only got a limited amount of time to sell this stuff. Who cares how much you originally paid for it. Perhaps there’s a chair that you paid $200 for and you’re selling it for $50 and that is already painful. Someone offers you $20 and you shockingly say no way!

You then receive 0 offers for it the rest of the garage sale. You end up taking it back inside and holding on to it for another five years because you didn’t want to negotiate. Now you’re stuck with a chair you don’t use, taking up space, and $20 less in your pocket.

Price Items Accordingly And Visibly

I can’t stand going to a garage sale and not knowing how much something is. Please don’t make anyone ask for the price.

Clearly tag all items. Garage Sale Stickers are incredibly cheap online or at your local store.

If you have 20 small items that you plan to sell for $2 each, place them all on a table and hang a tag stating that all items on this table are $2 each.

Trying to offload as much as you can? (Of course you are). Do something to appeal to those bargain shoppers that need to feel like they’re getting the best deal possible.

For example, on the table marked $2 each, add a sign that states “or 7 for $10”. Basically it’s 2 free and you’re not forced to bring those little things back into your home.

Don’t Put Everything On The Ground

Nobody wants to bend over. You want to make the successful sale easy.

Make sure you’re keeping most of your items close to eye level by utilizing every table you can find around the house and in your garage.

You could even place boards on top of two end tables to make a table for the day.

Group similar items together. For example, have a “shoe table” that only contains shoes. Add all the belts if you have room for those.

Borrow a few tables from friends/family or even other neighbors if you can. Let them know you’ll return the favor if they ever need some of your tables.

Make Taking Things Easy

Have a few grocery bags nearby so that you can nicely pack away items for your customers.

Depending on the items you are selling, you may even want to have a few boxes that could be packed. For example, if you’re selling heavy books, it would make it much more convenient to carry the books to the car if they were carefully placed inside of a box.

Perhaps you have some heavy furniture to sell so having a dolly or hand truck nearby to help get it to your customer’s vehicle would be much appreciated.

If you have glass items, consider bringing out some paper to wrap the items in so that they do not break on the way home.

Thoughtfulness matters.

Garage Sale Tips – Final Takeaways

I freaking love a good garage sale!

What I love most is getting rid of all the silly things I’ve purchased in the past that I have wasted time and energy on.

Plus, making money brings me joy as well. 😊

Having an amazing garage sale does take some planning on your part. Make sure you’re organized and don’t fall behind with your schedule. A successful garage sale isn’t one that you can easily plan in only a few days.

It’s a good idea to start planning for your garage sale weeks in advance.

Remember to be willing to let things go and do not spend time caring about how much you paid for the item ten years ago.

If you have items that are valuable like antiques or collectibles, turning to selling online instead of in a garage sale can significantly increase your earnings. Items like these are worth taking the time to research.

As you get towards the end of the sale day, consider a lower price on remaining items or bringing out a sign that says “Last Call – Everything Half Off!”.

Enjoy your successful yard sale day! The more planning = the less stress and the more 💲.