Suggestions of a Yard Sale Newbie

Last Saturday we had our first ever yard sale, which was obviously pretty exciting. It went pretty well, but I guess I must have been a bit optimistic about the amount of stuff one can sell and the number of people who want to buy stuff. Turns out, no one who comes really buys anything, and you sell almost nothing, especially if most of your stuff is over five dollars. Darn! However, I probably would have still done it even if I'd known. I always enjoy yard sales and I strangely had fun doing my own, despite my deluded expectations ;)

Here was our valiant attempt:

My friend Melanie is moving to Wisconsin next month, so she came too and sold a loooot of her own things. It helped having her there. Without her stuff our sale would have looked pretty sad. Kinda like it does in the photo above. (That's just our side of the sale.)

This is hers:

Note that she actually has people looking at her stuff.
They were very dedicated salespeople!

Anyway, if I ever have a yard sale again (it will happen, I mildly hoard) I will definitely be doing some things differently and I think these things would help me have more success.

More Signs. We (okay, I) made some awesome signs. I'm not even joking. You want to hire me to make your yard sale signs. They were that good. But we only put them on the corner right next to our house and on one other spot on the opposite side of the road from the drivers who would be facing it. Does that make sense? It was on the left side of the road, if you were a driver. So that was silly. I would definitely be a little more ambitious and put signs on major intersections even if they were several blocks away from our house. Dedicated yard-salers will see these and come no matter the distance.

Make Things Look Crowded. This sounds strange and kind of devious, but nonetheless I'm pretty sure I would smoosh all my stuff together in a way that looks really clustery. Toward the end of our sale, when things had seriously slowed down and it was only noon, Melanie's husband Kevin went out on the street to look at our display, and when he came running back he said this: "No wonder no one's coming, it looks like we have nothing left." The truth was we had almost everything left, we just set it up badly. I'd use more tables, put things in rows, line things up so they can be seen easily from the street, anything to show the "drive-by glancer" type that there is in fact a lot of stuff and they should probably come buy it immediately.

Price Things Crazy Low. People expect to be shocked and amazed at what they can get for pennies at a yard sale. I failed at this because, truthfully, I didn't care if my stuff sold or not. I am abnormally attached to my stuff, and secretly hoped that no one would want the things so I would have a reason to keep them for myself. So in reality, I wouldn't price things lower unless I really wanted/needed to get rid of stuff. Melanie, for example, is moving, so she really wanted to get rid of as many of her things as possible. And she did. She was selling stuff for way lower than necessary, and she and Kevin ended up making more money than we did. So my point is, if you want stuff to sell, make it ridiculously cheap. And if you REALLY want to get rid of stuff, pile it in a box that says "Free." It'll disappear, like magic.

Start Early and Settle In. We are lazy people who like to sleep in. So we started at 9. Even with that "late" start time we still got up at 7 and were working non-stop to set things up right until the last minute. Still, even with all the work and knowing I'd have a sleepless morning, I would start closer to 7. Our busiest time was for sure 8:30-9:30. Yes, half of our busiest time was before our sale had even officially begun. See what I mean? It's like people want to just buy cheap stuff and then get on with their day. Unthinkable.
That being said, I would also set a start time, and no end time. Well, maybe an end time like 6 pm. That's right. I would just set up and sit there as long as it takes, like it's my day job. If I really wanted to sell things, I would wait until there were literally no more people coming. That way, you might end at 2 (like we did), but you might have a random stream of people who thought 4 pm would be the perfect time to find that creepy ceramic bunny they never knew they wanted.

I might also sell lemonade for a couple quarters or something, cause we went to look at some yard sales recently and I will tell you I never wanted to buy something so much at a yard sale as that .25 lemonade.

There were some things that I think we did well, though:

For one, Joe put up a KSL ad, which I think probably brought in quite a few people. He made sure ours stuck out and was funny and welcoming, because there were SO MANY ads that even within 40 minutes ours had disappeared from the front page.

We also priced eeeeverything the night before, when we were still awake and happy. This made things so much easier the next day as we didn't have to decide on the spot how much we were willing to sell things for (although we did do some negotiating, as I think every yard saler should).

And we were selling radios and TVs, so Joe was brilliant and brought out an extension cord so we could blast the radio and play a movie on our TV, and anyone who wanted could test the electronics before they bought them. It was smart--ALL of our electronics sold--and it made our yard sale fun, because there was music and the Last Unicorn.

 Anyway, it was fun and a good experience generally, and we did make a good chunk of extra cash. I still have a few big items left that I'm planning on selling individually on KSL. Like this desk!

Handpainted by my own dear mother, it is a cute little child's desk that 
any young girl would love to have at her disposal!

 And this dresser:

Hand-stenciled by mom, and is a total flashback into my 10-year old room.

Those may or may not be two of the things I slightly overpriced due to my weird extreme attachment to things. But nevertheless I am actually selling them, so I guess if any wandering reader is dying to buy one or both, you definitely may! The dresser is 30 and the little desk is 20. For now :)

I have an adult-sized desk as well, and a jewelry box. Oh, and a ton of books by Mary Higgins Clark, John Grisham, and Agatha Christie. Just in case you really want some of my stuff. Let me know.

Perhaps these nuggets of wisdom will help one of you out in your yard sale adventures! Otherwise, I'm really impressed with you for reading a whole post about someone selling their unwanted junk, haha. Thanks!