Garage Sale is OVER!!!

I’m so glad that my garage sale is finally over.  Those things are exhausting.

For the most part, I followed my own advice and we did pretty well.  We had good traffic, but maybe not as good as some we’ve had in the past.  There were TONS of garage sales in our town on Saturday.

We made 250.00 on the day of the sale.

Plus – I had followed my own advice and taken any nicer books to a Half-Price Books Store.  I had around 45 books, and since I would price them at .50 at the most at my garage sale, and of course not all would sell, I had decided that if they gave me 20.00, I would be happy.  They gave me 45.00!!!

I also put a few items that had some possible worth on Craigslist.  One sold for 25.00.

And, the Saturday before, when we were getting ready for the sale, I found an item that made me think, “Hmmm, maybe this is worth something.”  I followed my own advice and put it on ebay.  I had planned to put 40.00 on it at the garage sale, and it ended up going to 68.00 on ebay.  Definitely worth the effort, and now I have no “what ifs” to worry about.

So, all of those bring a grand total of:  388.00!  Not bad.

Oh, and the kids earned 18.00 selling their toys.

Although it is nice to do it with a friend, we did it alone this time.  The big advantage to that is not having to keep track of who earned what.  Just shove the money in your belted purse.

My own advice that I didn’t take:

I didn’t put it on Craigslist.  I completely forgot to do that, but I don’t think it made a huge difference since I live in an area where buyers rely on the local newspaper to find sales.

I didn’t have every single item priced.  I priced almost all, but there were some that were in boxes and didn’t get pulled out until the day of.

The “leftovers” are still sitting in my garage.  This scares me.  Our church is supposed to be having a garage sale for someone, and I would like to donate my extras to that, but I can’t wait until they’re ready to start accepting donations.  My plan is to load it all up tomorrow and drop it off at a local place on Tuesday at the latest.  I’m sure that I’ll do enough decluttering by the end of June to be able to donate some to that.

I’m sharing all of my mistakes to say that although you can be ultra prepared, it’s also okay to just get it done.  Do your best, but in the end it’s about getting rid of stuff.  I have purged so much since starting this blog.  It feels great to have that stuff out of my house.

The 388.00 is a great bonus.

And just a random example of how garage sales work.  I had a lot of costumes.  As a former Theatre teacher, I love collecting costumes for my kids.  A few people looked, but no one seemed interested in buying them.  Toward the end of the sale, a grandma showed up.  She saw that I had boy costumes, and got so excited because she had dress-up clothes at her house for her granddaughter, but her grandson didn’t have anything to dress up in.  She bought pretty much every single costume that I had.  I sold most of them, but it wasn’t because people love to buy costumes, it was because the right person happened to show up at my garage sale.

Sorry for the randomness of thought in this post.  I am one tired lady, and I’m heading to bed.  Hope it was somewhat coherent.