Garage Sale

My mom-in-law's house is the absolutely BEST place to have a garage sale. I am unsure if it is because their house is 1/4 mile off the road and cannot be seen from the road, so people get curious as to what is back behind the woods, and then stop in; or if it is because they have a good reputation for having "good" stuff at their garage sales. Whatever it is, it makes for a great garage sale every year! The last time I helped her have a garage sale was a few years ago and we made a TON of money- over $1,000.00! People were crowding around tables fighting over items. I had never seen anything like it. The last couple garage sales she has had were when I lived in NC, so I wasn't here to help, but she did really well with them too. This year, Aunt Mindy, grandma, and Brad's mom all went in together and had one. I threw in a few items I had, but I had gotten rid of a lot of stuff before we moved back to MI. We didn't put an advertisement in the paper or anything, but just stuck 2 signs out by the road around their house on Thursday morning around 9 am. Before Scott was back from pounding the 2 signs into the ground, 3 cars had already pulled in. There was a steady flow of cars/people all day long. Everyone sold a lot and made a lot of money- combined total of $650.00!!! The clothing and bedding went the fastest!

These are all the tubs of clothes!

The girls, Halle and Bailey, had a little pink lemonade stand. They colored a sign and sold cups of lemonade for 10 cents each. After about an hour of it, they were off playing, and so the lemonade stand closed. They each made a couple dollars though. I think they drank more than their profit, but they had fun doing it anyways.
We finally closed it down around 4:30-5ish. There really wasn't a whole lot of stuff left. We decided to have it again today, Friday. We put the signs out at around 9:30am, had a few people, and ended up closing it down for good at 12:00pm. There really wasn't anything good left because everything had been picked over the day before. I think $50 or so dollars worth of stuff sold in those couple hours, but most people weren't finding anything they wanted. We ended up having a family friend request that we bring all our "leftovers" to her house. She is having a big sale/donation party in a couple weeks to raise money for a group that helps girls struggling with anorexia. So, we bagged and boxed everything up and took it over to her house. It was a lot of fun to help out with the garage sale again this year. We have mentioned that we should start renting out my in-law's driveway for people to have their garage sales on. It is unbelievable the amount of traffic that comes back to check everything out.
A few garage sale tips that seem to work for us:
1. Price everything cheap! We priced clothes/shoes at $1.00 each, but have been known to go down to 25 cents each. We also priced whole bedding sets at $10.00!!! What a steal!
2. Have the mentality that whatever doesn't sell, does NOT come back into the house. We take everything that doesn't sell to either Goodwill or a different charity. Nothing comes back inside!!
3.Be willing to negotiate a little!
4. If you have a garage sale with other people, write down every sale and how much of it went to each person. Otherwise, you have no clue what each person made at the end of the day.
5. Start out with an exact amount of money at the beginning. We started with $50, which we broke down into $1, $5 bills, and a bunch of change.
I am sure by this time next year the tubs will be filled up again with lots of junk for the annual garage sale. It doesn't take long to accumulate stuff that you will never use again. I guess we will just have to wait and see....