If you love to go to garage/yard sales (junking) like I do, you might call a sale with only clothing a “drive-by”. Usually the clothing is thrown on a blanket in the yard and they are charging too much, and with nothing else to look at it’s not worth stopping the car.
But this summer, I held 2 yard sales that were clothing-only and both were successful so I thought I’d blog how it’s done. All of the clothes were donated for a good cause. The initial bags that were brought to my house took up a large chunk of my living room and spilled over into the front room…
Bags of clothing before sorting….
I knew that the clothing would sell better if it was sorted by size. Even someone like me would stop if I could only go through the sizes that I wanted. With this in mind, I borrowed several tubs from a neighbor and went to work. I love showing “during” photos of my organizing, because I want people to have a realistic idea of what happens while you are working ( everything expands). There was no way for me to do it all myself, but lucky for me, I have a friend who sorts clothes as part of her job. She came over and helped. Then later that night, another friend came over. (yay!!)
Bags of clothing during the sort
All told, we estimated that we sorted 90 bags of clothing (some of those were big yard-size bags). We sorted the kids clothing into sizes 6-8, 8-10, 10-12, 12-14. And put the tubs in long lines. IMPORTANT: leave room in between your totes b/c if you put them too close together, your customers will just mix the sizes up. With room in between, they’ll put the ones they’ve looked at out of the tote, and then put back in the ones they don’t want.
Bags of clothes after sorting.
We also made sure all of the shoes had pairs and semi-sorted the adult clothing into types/styles of clothing instead of sizes. The last few tips are:
1. Price all the kids clothing at a quarter a piece, the adult clothing at 50 cents a piece, and shoes at a dollar a pair….and you will sell tons! The point of a yard sale is to make some money off of things that you are willing to give away, so don’t price so high that you have to make several trips to the second-hand store afterwards.
2. A new tip I picked up from a friend is to make your yard sale signs using black paint and a foam brush. It’s less stinky (fumes) than a big permanent marker, and will show up really well from far away.
I got so busy as soon as I had the clothing out on the driveway, that I never got time to take pictures of the actual yard sale, so I made a diagram of where we put stuff on my driveway. We had a few drive-bys, but mostly people stopped. I had quite a few people tell me how organized it was, and that it was the first time they even considered buying clothing at a yard sale.
Our 2nd INFO (Ideas Necessary For Organizing) meeting was a "closet clarification". One member of our group offered her closet for a purging exercise.
Often, I find that the difficulty in getting rid of things with sentimental value or significant monetary value (like nice clothes or books) is not wanting to appear wasteful. It's hard to "throw away" something that is still practical even if we have a surplus of this item. In such situations, most people are seeking permission to get rid of these things that are cluttering their lives and homes.
Another hindrance is an emotional attachment that we form to objects. It is important to remember that while these objects may have produced real emotions; they do not have real emotions.
To overcome these hurdles, we decided to throw a farewell party for the clothes. We gave them a proper send off and they were donated to a good cause so they were not wasted. As far as permission: if my authority was questioned, we went to our panel. I equipped the panel with signs that said "stay" or "go".
Our panel gave us great advice and some new ideas while also learning from our hostess' example and receiving motivation to go home and clear out their own closets.
Some areas we discussed were:
Clothes that no longer fit.
Let's be honest. If the clothes don't make you feel good, you're not going to wear them. If you do put back on weight that you've lost, wearing clothes with extra room is only going to allow you to eat more...not motivate you to lose weight again. Some of these clothes were kept and put in a pile to be tailored. If they cannot be altered or if she does not take them to get altered, she has to throw them out.
Before
After
Clothes that went out of style that you think might come back in.
There are a few classic styles, however styles that "come back in" usually do not come back in the exact same way. When in doubt, ask a friend (or a panel) - if it's dated then it'll be obvious.
Clothes with sentimental value that you never wear.
In this category are maternity clothes (when your children are all grown up) and funeral wear. For the maternity clothes, you usually have plenty of pictures with you wearing your favorites. As for the dress you wore to your parent's funeral, I'm definitely against keeping. Why keep something that will make you sad and take up room in your life? We did let her keep a scarf that went with the dress as a smaller and not so dreary memento until she's ready to let that go as well.
Clothes that you might wear once a year to a holiday or fancy party.
The panel made an excellent point here. If you wear an outfit to every holiday party, then your coworkers/friends/family have seen it, and it's time for something new. Here I let her keep a few things that were still fashionable, hadn't been over worn, and were fancy enough for a holiday party.
Clothes that duplicate.
Our "victim" (big thanks by the way) had several black skirts. We let her keep most of them because she could give us a reason for them and she actually wore them. But we did make her get rid of 2 that she hadn't worn and couldn't foresee an event that she could wear them to.
Before
After
Some other ideas our panel came up with were:
-some items our hostess gets to keep for a year and then reevaluate whether she wears them or they're wasting space.
-there comes a time to dress in what suits you instead of dressing for an image that you're trying to portray.
-try on the clothes that you haven't worn for awhile and see if they might be worn in a different way/for a different occasion.
Thanks group! That was a lot of fun.
basement, clothes, decluttering, furniture, gifts, organization, overwhelmed, stay at hom mom, zones
Basement Guest/Storage Room Organization
Thanks to my friend who asked me over to help her organize. I know that it is hard to let people see your rooms when they've become overwhelming, but I'm so glad that she let me help.
Some challenges from today include:
1. A well-meaning spouse who likes to put random objects together in bags or boxes & transfer them to the basement in an attempt to clean the main floor. This created nice "surprise bags".
2. Gifts bought ahead of time (which I may have to start next year) that were spread across two closets.
3. Hand-me-downs with no clear space to sort them into bins.
4. Furniture and toys clogging up the space.
For four hours we:
1. Sorted through all the surprise bags and put like items together in bins.
2. Put all the gifts together-- fully utilizing the space in one closet.
3. Put the clothes in the other closet thus "containing" them until the home owner can sort through them & put them into bins according to size. Now that there's free floor space, it's a perfect room for the sorting task ahead.
4. Moved the furniture around so that the "bedroom" furniture was on one side of the room & the toys on the other. This helped to visually unclutter the space by creating "zones".
I love going to garage sales and have been "junking" most summer Saturdays since I was 12. I had held a few garage sales with other people, but never had much luck. Last year, I decided to work backwards--to hold a garage sale the way I as a junker would love to find. The result was success!
So this summer I shared my tips with a neighbor who had mostly clothes to sell. I was a little doubtful since I usually pass on garage sales with mostly clothes, but she got a lot of traffic & sold a ton of clothes.
THE TIPS:
1. Signs-- Use the same color (preferably neon) for all your signs.
Don't put an address or a time. Nobody is going to slow down & try to read it. Put "Yard Sale" and a nice big, visible arrow. "huge", "multi-family" and other adjectives are mostly ignored b/c they're rarely true.
Place the sign up high on the same side of the road as you want people to turn. Nothing is more infuriating that going all the way into a right lane because you spotted a neon sign, only to see the arrow pointing left.
2. Set up-- Nobody wants to dig through your boxes. Take the time to do some sorting & put your best items on tables.
High visibility/high appeal items should be placed out front or facing the curb to attract customers.
Clothes are best put into sizes. We got the most sales after we had sorted the clothes so that customers could go right to the bin they wanted instead of having to dig. One thing I would've done differently in hind sight is to put the bins at a distance from each other. A few customers took clothes from one bin & just threw them into the next one.
If you don't have many items to sell, ask neighbors to join you or wait til the next year. If these are not possible, place your items on the front 1/2 of your driveway to make them appear to fill the space.
3. Pricing--This is the area where I used to trip up. I used to pay whatever the asking price was, and expected others to do the same if I set the price low enough. Not so.
Nobody expects to pay listed price at a garage sale. You've hauled these items out, and as a customer I know that you don't want to haul them back in. Decide what your lowest price will be & then mark it higher. Don't go too high or people will think your expectations are to high & will not even try to bargain.
Example: If you want $20 out of an item mark it $35. If your willing to take a dollar, mark it $2 or even $5. Just remember that people usually come to garage sales with $20 or maybe $40 and they are not prepared to spend much more. For high ticket items, try the classifieds.
By 12:00, some junkers are tired or hungry and aware that most of the best deals are gone. The hard core junkers know that by this time the home owner is ready to deal. If you're serious about letting go--mark most items for $1 or half-price and put a sign out. And be prepared to be offered very little.
Have fun! (& remember to invite me to come & shop)
Email Me
- Jaz
- I'm a stay-at-home mom of 3 who likes to organize, craft, & read (among other things)
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