Summer Yard Sale, Part 2: The Sale

Let me just start by showing this picture and saying that this happened even before our sale got started:

Yep - that's right, folks - a bird pooped on a pair of shorts.  Right in front of a customer.  Great.

So after ardently preparing for our neighborhood sale, and getting all our stuff sorted, organized, and priced (HUGE thank yous to my husband and parents for their help!), we had our long-awaited garage sale from 8:00-1:00 (actually, it was more like 7:15-1:00, thanks to those early birds).  I should have taken before and after pictures, but we started with a whole ton of stuff - the tables were covered - and this is what we ended with:

Enough for three boxes and one bag of clothes worth of donations.  We also made triple the amount of money I was expecting, but the money was truly a bonus.  I did this to serve our neighborhood by advertising and coordinating the sale and as one step toward creating a more simple, organized home (more on that later this week!).

Take Aways:

• Being a good garage saler (which I believe I am) does not necessarily mean you will be a good garage sale-haver.  Case in point - I got royally ripped off on a very nice bench my parents brought.  I told the first person who asked $10 and she bought it immediately and said she would come with a truck to pick it up later.  I feel like a complete idiot now, because while she was gone, several people asked about the bench and one lady said she would have paid $50 for it.  Ooops - lesson learned.
• Most people saw our add on Craigslist.org.  A few said they drove by signs, but most said they heard about it from Craigslist.  I did not advertise in the paper because it costs money, and I don't think our sales suffered as a result.
• Neighborhood sales are the way to go!  We had a sale one house down and several throughout the neighborhood, so we had tons of traffic.

Overall, the yard sale was a great success.  I'm eager to hear how other folks in the neighborhood did, and it's the first thing I can cross off my list of summer goals!