Group Like Items Together at Your Next Garage Sale

The best #garage, #yard and #tag sales price items clearly and display like items together — like in a retail store — so shoppers can find the items in which they are most interested. For instance, a clothing table should have separate, distinct stacks of men’s, women’s and children’s wear; another table would group small appliances; and another would hold tools. “Departments might include collectibles, tools, furniture, sporting goods, decor, linens, kitchen electronics, books, toys and framed photos,” Angi says.

Have Your First Post-Pandemic Garage Sale

Did you order and accumulate lot of extra #stuff during the COVID-19 shutdowns last year? Now that the pandemic is on the wane, you can finally have a #garage sale safely and make some money from that extra #junk. Sort through some your clothing, books and household goods and set aside whatever you don’t need that’s still in decent shape. Don’t overwhelm potential patrons with huge quantities of used clothing and books, Wholefully says; display and price only the best items in those categories and donate the rest.

Set Aside Garage Sale Items All Year Long

To sort out the stuff you’d like to sell at your #garage, yard or tag sale, designate a shelf, box or area where you can set aside saleable items you no longer want throughout the year. In this way, you can #declutter the rooms in your home in small, manageable steps, while planning to eventually recapture some of the money you spent. “When you’ve collected enough, it’s sale time,” HGTV says. Sort your items into categories, price them clearly and advertise your sale with signs and online classifieds.

Harvest the Benefits of a Fall Garage Sale

The temperatures are cooling, the leaves are changing colors and soon enough, snow will be falling in many parts of the country. But although fall begins on Monday, Sept. 23, there’s still time to do a good #decluttering and make some money by selling the things you don’t want.

That’s right — fall is one of the best times of the year to have a garage, yard or tag sale. The weather is often as good as or better than it is in the summer, and having fewer sales and other events to compete with can help your sale corner the market.

“Spring and summer may be the most popular #garagesale seasons, but popular is not always a good thing,” says the Skywriters Garage Blog. “A fall garage sale typically faces little to no competition. With no competitors, you could be the busiest sale in town.”

What you decide to #declutter and tag can also have an impact on your fall sale’s success. Few people are looking to buy used Halloween, Thanksgiving and Christmas decorations during the spring and summer seasons; sell them now, and buyers will pay premium prices.

Similarly, nobody is thinking about cooler temperatures while they’re shopping in the sweltering summer sun. Down jackets, winter coats, sweaters and flannels will sell better as the weather starts to cool off.

You can also lure customers in by selling fall treats such as pumpkin bars and hot apple cider. Put the kids on this task and let them use the money to get Halloween costumes or whatever else they need for the season.

There are still six weekends until Halloween, when the northern states see a radical shift in temperatures and daylight hours; any of them is fair game for a sale. If you live further south, you’ll have more options before your neighbors hole up against the cold.

The money you earn can help fund a happy holiday season, and getting rid of excess #clutter is its own reward. “Before you batten down the hatches for a winter-long hibernation, decluttering and #organizing your home will help ease stress and make the season go more smoothly,” says Financial Avenue.

When your garage sale is over, #donate the lightly used clothing and household items that don’t sell to ClothingDonations.org. You’ll support valuable veterans programs throughout the country — and avoid bringing that clutter back into your home.

Get the Kids to Declutter on Their Summer Vacation

School’s out (for the summer)! And if you have kids, that means you’ll be looking for something to keep them busy for six or eight hours on most weekdays. Summer camp, a family vacation and other diversions are great options, but they can’t fill every one of those hours fast enough. This summer, get your kids involved in a good #decluttering.

You can already hear the collective groan you might hear as you suggest such a chore. But if you organize and incentivize the task, you might find that it gets done faster and more completely — and then everyone can really enjoy the summer fun.

Set a goal; the Making Lemonade blog suggests a summertime target of reducing stuff by one-third. Kids tend to accumulate lots of toys, clothing and other junk that they outgrow quickly, leading to overstuffed closets and drawers, so extra stuff should be easy to weed out. Put each of them in in charge of choosing what to keep.

Find a rainy day or quiet weekend to have everyone pitch in and declutter their personal spaces, or simply set a deadline. As an incentive, put a garage or yard sale on the calendar; anything that the kids are able to declutter and sell will mean extra money in their pockets — money they can spend on whatever they wish.

Toys can present an especially challenging decluttering task, says Simply Well Balanced. Sort them into categories — building toys, stuffed animals, craft supplies, etc. — and ask your child to keep only a limited number of favorites. Those few items will go back to the closets and shelves, and the rest will be bagged and boxed for sale or #donation. Anything broken or unusable can go directly into the trash.

After you hold your sale and distribute the proceeds, you can box up the leftover clothing, toys and other household items and schedule a ClothingDonations.org pickup. A driver will stop by on the appointed day, load up your stuff and leave a donation receipt for tax purposes. That lightly used merchandise will then be resold to fund veterans’ programs.

This, in itself, can be a lesson in personal responsibility for younger children, decluttering coach Gari Julius Weilbacher told WHYY. “It’s wonderful to teach kids from a young age about making meaningful donations. Involving kids in packing up the books, toys and clothes that they are no longer using can engage them in the process.”