A month ago a new
client called. She was stressed about her upcoming move. She knew she’d need to
seriously downsize her chaotically cluttered home and she was floundering
without any plan. It was a pleasure to work with her and see the change, both
in her home and her energy. At the first session, I assessed her the level of
clutter in her home, helped her clarify her goals, identified challenges,
provided solutions and created a plan.
A few days ago
she had a very successful garage sale. What was success for her? The sun was
shining, she made $200 and best of all, it was relatively easy for her to let
go and see so many of her possessions find a new home. In the process, she had
de-cluttered, taken inventory, decided what was important, and let go of much
of what wasn’t. I stopped by to see how she was doing. She was beaming. I even
bought something myself. This skunk looked cute, so in the spirit of
encouraging her to see things off to new homes, I paid the stickered price, 25
cents, and took it home to my animal shelf.
Many clients want
to make money off their ‘stuff’. It’s a great concept. When it works. Which
doesn’t always happen. When is a good time to have a garage sale, you ask? If
you are willing to put in the time and energy, have a good location, distribute
adequate signage, and then have stuff that people will actually pay you money
for, well then it may work for you.
My tips for
having a garage sale include:
1)
strategic signage helps
2) price to
sell, not to make money
3) know your
bottom line in case you get a low offer for items you consider valuable,
4) arrange
your things attractively and show as much as you can (it won’t sell in a box)
5) have a
pre-arranged plan for what to do
with the leftovers, preferably for immediately following the garage sale
6) interact
with shoppers, be polite and friendly
7) Saturdays
are generally more profitable than Sundays
8) have fun!
My personal
experiences with garage sales have been mixed. Most have been fun. I’ve made
between $85 and $600 on garage sales. Once I got cranky when an early bird
shopper offered me a tenth of a posted price for an item I was still attached
to (see tip #3).
In 1990, in
Winnipeg, I was selling our house and preparing for a cross-country move to
Vancouver.
Downsizing for us meant a BIG garage sale. We put out everything we could find that wasn’t going to fit into our
truck. We didn’t sell the kitchen sink but we did put out a toilet left over
from our bathroom reno. That resulted in a comic moment later when we looked up
to see a friend’s 4-year-old boy using it as his own personal toilet, as calmly
as if he was in our bathroom and not being watched by about 10 shoppers. I don’t
remember if the toilet sold or not, but we did have a chuckle.
Our home was a
small post-war bungalow and when we'd bought the home a year-and-a-half
earlier, we found a few choice items tucked up into the basement rafters. Two
items stood out. Motorcycle gang colours, from The Outlaws if memory serves me,
which we didn’t put on the garage sale, and a collection of big buttons with
nakid men on them. Running. On beaches. We put those on a garage sale
table to see what would happen. And they sold. (Okay I feel a slight twinge of
guilt about my shameless teasing of the buyer.)
 |
| This Pope's Hat sold for $1209! |
I’ve also shopped
at garage sales, though certainly not as much since I’ve been in the
de-cluttering business. When traveling, I’ll stop at garage sales to see what
people in other countries have pulled out of their closets. That’s how I found
this platter in San Francisco.
Do you have boxes
piled up that you’ve been meaning to sell “Someday”? Is your home cluttered
with things you don’t want? The sun’s out, perfect weather for a garage sale. Have fun with it and bless your stuff goodbye. And if we can help, by all means call Goodbye Clutter! We’ll help you make room
for what matters.
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