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.

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You'll have to excuse the photos on this one...there really was no way to photograph all the work that was done....so there's not a startling difference this time, but there was a very BIG difference made.

A couple of weeks ago, I went to help a friend with organizing. She is a new homeowner, has been in her home for a few months, and has been asking for my help. When I arrived, I asked where we should start and she didn't know. She was so overwhelmed (here I should mention she has 5 children under the age of 7 and her husband is deployed) that she didn't know where to start.

As I had her catalog what problems she was having, I could see a difference in her expression when she said that she hadn't even finished moving all of their belongings into their house....so I thought that HERE is where we should start.

This is a section of the garage before....we focused our efforts on the line of boxes that starts just behind the green cooler in the foreground.

Here is an after shot of the garage....there is still a lot more to go, but if you can tell there is a lot fewer boxes in this shot than the one before. I figured later that we had unpacked 10 large boxes and 7 totes.

So this blog post will be about the best way to move-in or unpack boxes.

I always like to have what I call a "staging area"...this is a place that is already cleared out where you can spread your items to the four corners. In this case, we took all of the boxes from the garage to the living room.

Once all of the boxes were inside, we designated zones. Most of the boxes contained the kids' clothing, toys, and some memorabilia....so these were our zones. The boxes that contained all of the SAME item got moved to the appropriate zone, and those miscellaneous boxes (that we all seem to pack once we're sick of packing boxes) got unpacked into one of the zones.

I also like to set aside a pile for organizing items that you may already have like: the totes you empty out, baskets, boxes, and cute decorative items that can double as storage. This makes it easier to find when you're ready to put things away.

Here is a pic of the living room sectioned into zones...the left wall was clothes, the back wall was toys, and in the foreground was memorabilia. (the small pile in the center before the half wall and door is the organizing items pile)

And here is the living room after 8 hours of our most dedicated sorting/putting away efforts.

So how did we do it?

We tackled the zones one at a time. Memorabilia didn't really need to be sorted, just found a place inside of the house. I knew that the funnest zone would be toys, so we forced ourselves to sort clothes first.

The best and easiest way that I've found when sorting giant boxes, totes, or even drawers is just to DUMP IT. Clear a spot, dump the box, and then dive in. The homeowner made decisions on which clothes to keep and give away....and we put them away accordingly. Then we did the same with the toys.

The most important thing is to keep at it. Focus on the progress that you have made, and maybe even reward yourself when you're through. (and when all else fails call a friend like me..*smiles*)

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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)

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