Post Yard Sale Wrapup
We had the yard sale yesterday, and there were good and bad things along with it. The good included us actually figuring out a ton of stuff we do not want or need, and getting it all organized and out to sell (including, yes, some of the endless toys my kids have). The bad included 50 degree weather in which hardly anyone wants to go out to yard sales in.
So, we ended up only making $24. Not a great haul for a day’s work by any means, but at least it wasn’t $0, which by 10am I was starting to fear. It did warm up to a balmy 55 degrees by 11am and we had a few customers between then and 2pm. The majority of what sold this time was outgrown clothes from my kids, and a few VHS movies.
Now I need to decide what to do with all the stuff now stacked on one side of my garage. I am going to get on the waiting list Monday for a consignment sale this spring, and I also may take a bunch of the clothes to Once Upon a Child and see what they’ll buy. They pay pretty poorly but sometimes it is just about purging the stuff. The rest of it? I’ll relist some of it on craigslist, and hopefully finally try the shoes on Ebay. I also need to do some searches for online places that buy old video games. And maybe just donate or throw out some of it. That’d be a step in a positive direction against accumulation… if I can do it. I have donated a lot of stuff in the past to Goodwill when we lived in an apartment and couldn’t have yard sales, but I’ve found it harder to do so since we moved because I theoretically could sell it now.
I made my first snowflake payment to Citicard, once I’d come back from grocery shopping I logged in and paid them $24. I can make three more online payments of $5 or more before the end of September…. better get cracking on those snowflake generators! Heh.
~J
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September 16th, 2007 at 5:59 pm
I had a very similar experience to this. My mom told me that I wouldn’t make much money, and I didn’t. But I did manage to clean out my room, and I donated the rest of the useless things.
September 16th, 2007 at 7:24 pm
Indeed. I’ve found them touch and go. Same with auctions/online sales.
But you’ve got $24 which is way better than nothing for paying off debt! Hopefully the being out fresh air was nice too.
September 16th, 2007 at 8:44 pm
The yard sale was very…cold…cold… but it was nice. I wish I had a laptop though, I played games on my cell phone to amuse myself.
I am such a child of the digital age….
September 16th, 2007 at 9:05 pm
Oh my gosh, what a downer!
Do you have any room to pack it away until next year’s yard sale season? I find the start of the season much better than the end - people are eager to get out of the house, etc. Also, do you have a “city wide” rummage any time at all? The more people you could get together with (different houses) the better chance all of you have to earn more - even if you can get a handful of your neighbors and have a neighborhood one, you’d have a better chance.
I’m lucky we have the storage room - we already have a pile ready for our yardsale in June of ‘08. It’s the city wide for our little city, and people drive in from miles away.
So sorry you had such a bad experience! Good luck with craigslist and ebay!
September 16th, 2007 at 9:42 pm
It was our neighborhood one - our neighborhood has one in June and one in Sept. We did a lot better in June.
It’s okay, I am going to try and craigslist what I can and the rest will live in our garage I think til next year.
September 17th, 2007 at 11:22 am
If I were you, I would just itemize and donate. I’m too lazy to sell individual items on eBay and craigslist.
September 17th, 2007 at 6:52 pm
@savingdiva - i will probably end up donating, but we don’t itemize deductions on our taxes so I’ll just dump it all in their donation box. lol
but I have pics of a lot of it from the last time i tried to sell it on craigslist so i figure i’ll try one more time :shrug:
September 18th, 2007 at 10:58 am
We had similar poor results this year at our annual sale. One year we netted &2000 from garbage picked items (we pick in the spring when the college students throw away, store all summer, then sell in the fall when students return).
Local “charities” were so picky about what they would & wouldn’t take, we said forget about it!
We started giving stuff away thru FreeCycle- but it was taking too damn long since we had so much stuff left. So we had a free sale this past weekend- just put out our clutter with a huge FREE sign. Would you believe people would be interested but then decide it was too much hassle? But it all disappeared once we left the house for a few hours. I think some folks are too proud to take freebies if someone is looking on…
September 18th, 2007 at 11:15 pm
good idea leaving the free sign!