It’s Garage Sale Season—Are You Ready?

With Memorial Day already behind us, it’s time to look forward to other summertime activities. One of the most popular summer traditions is the neighborhood garage sale. It’s time to reward the hard work you did while spring cleaning and organizing your home, and give the unneeded items you found while cleaning a new home.

If you’re participating in your neighborhood garage sale, the process of organizing your sale items can be daunting and overwhelming. But, despite the potential stress, attracting shoppers to your treasures is also part of the fun! You need to strategize and develop a plan, which is where we come in to help.

In the weeks before your sale, go through each room of your home with a box. If you find unused and unopened cooking utensils in your kitchen drawers, place them in the box. If there are shelves of unread, or already read, books in your home, it’s time to put new price tags on them. Then, tackle your bedroom and closet. Is there furniture in your bedroom that you’re not using (old dressers, desks, etc.)? Are there clothes in your closet that you haven’t worn in years? Add them to the box. Going room by room will make your garage sale planning more organized and stress-free!

When it comes time to have the sale, you know that you have great items—but do your potential customers? Make sure to have plenty of prominent signage. Get creative, and have fun with your ads! Consider having refreshments (like water or lemonade) available for guests if it’s hot outside. For parents bringing young children along, be sure to have a station or area where children can color or play board games. These are just a few ways to make sure your sale stands out even more!

Not everything will sell, of course. But, don’t despair! If you have leftover items that didn’t sell, do not bring them back into your home where they’ll just sit in boxes and collect dust for another year. Avoid the clutter and do a good deed at the same time by donating these items to us! ClothingDonations.org will pick up your donations for you, making it incredibly easy for you to keep a clean, clutter-free home for the summer. Even better, your donation will help fund our veterans programs. You can visit our website for more details and to schedule your donation pickup time.

Happy Garage Sale-ing!

Yard Sales Everywhere!

The start of summer means garage sale season is right around the corner. Make sure your sale is a success! Better Homes and Gardens suggests using impactful language on your sign, displaying prices visibly, and having a play or coloring station for kids visiting your sale with their parents. Read more of their ideas and tips here.

Donations That Go A Long Way

Don’t want the hassle of a garage sale this season? This is still a great time to go through each room to find items you no longer need or want. If they’re gently used, don’t throw them out 一 donate them to us! ClothingDonations.org takes a variety of donations, including clothes, shoes, kitchenware, cooking utensils, books, and movies. Your donations help fund our veterans programs. Learn more about our donation services here.

 

Let the Summer Fun Begin!

Memorial Day weekend is often seen as the kickoff to summer. It’s a weekend where family and friends go camping, have cookouts and participate in other summer activities. Now that Memorial Day is behind us don’t forget that we should take time to thank and honor the men and women in the United States Armed Forces who fought, and continue to fight for, our freedom. Make sure to thank a veteran for his or her service!

Put Them to Work!

With the kids home over the summer chances are that things are a little bit more cluttered at your house than usual! As they dig out old toys and games, outdoor sporting equipment and other sundry items used to keep them amused during those long, lazy days of summer things can pile up.

With school looming in the not-too-distant future, now’s the time to get a head start on summer clutter clean-up. And what better timing than when the kids are at home to lend a hand!

Whatever their ages, your kids can be put to work on helping to clean up the clutter in preparation for back-to-school. One added benefit—as they get rid of the old they can keep a list of what replacement items they may need. Whether old clothes are torn and tattered, or simply no longer fit, now is a good time to begin those back-to-school shopping lists.

Don’t have kids? Summer time still means some added clutter for all of us. There’s no better time to declutter than when the temperatures are warm and the nights are long!

Here are some additional tips to help you get on top of summer clutter:

  • Do it in stages. Maybe one week you assign a task of emptying old dressers and closets, another week you focus on the basement, the garage, the family room, etc.
  • Keep that list handy: ask everyone to keep track of the replacement item “must haves” that they will need when they get rid of no-longer-need/want items.
  • Separate “need to be tossed” from “someone else may value” items so you can readily donate your still-in-good-shape, but no longer needed items.
  • Don’t overlook adult clutter: spend some time focusing on all of the areas of your house that lend themselves to clutter: “junk” drawers, kitchen cabinets, pantries, etc.
  • Give us a call! When you’ve cleared through the clutter and have identified items that can go to good homes, give us a call—we offer free pick-up.

Finally, gather those lists together and plan for some fun end-of-summer, back-to-school shopping to replenish your closets for fall!