Sunshine on the Inside: Weekend Update: Garage Sale Recovery

Sun porch before the garage sale:

Sun porch after the garage sale:

Still not great, but at least you can see the floor now.

Garage Sale Leftovers were picked up by a local non-profit Sunday morning:

All in all, we had a successful garage sale, although the weather was horrendous! Rain and fifty degree weather = not fun at all. I was open from 8:30am-2pm on Thursday and 9:15am-1pm on Friday. I made everything 50% off at 11am on Friday because I was cold, and I didn't want to be outside any longer.

We did make about $750 over 2 days, which greatly impressed Bill and me. I didn't even think we had that much in tagged merchandise. The most expensive things we sold were a $30 chair and a $35 stroller. Everything else was $15 or less. The little things added up, obviously! We didn't sell any kids clothes this year, but we did sell Bill and my clothing from a huge closet purge that we did b.b. (before blogging) earlier this year. We priced all clothing at 50 cents per item because it's used clothing at a garage sale and you can't really try things on. We sold piles of our clothes at that price. I even bought a couple things:).

Our expenses for having this garage sale: 50 cents = 1 poster board:

I had this poster up for about 15 minutes before the wind took it down, and I didn't need to have it up. The traffic on our street was unbelievable. One of our neighbors was selling hot food. They even offered delivery of their hot food to the neighbors running garage sales who couldn't make it down to the food stand. Pretty awesome.

This experience was interesting to me, because we hosted a garage sale last year with a great deal of bigger items that we had to get rid of after our move and before our basement finish and we didn't make half of what we made during this sale. We held the sale on a different day from the city-wide sale and had to make many, many more signs.

Lessons learned from this garage sale:

1. If your city has a city-wide sale and you want to have a garage sale, plan your sale to coincide with the city-wide sale. More traffic=More sales.

2. Adult clothing will sell...if it is priced right.

3. Little things add up.

4. Hosting a garage sale is much, much easier if you plan in advance. We've been collecting garage sale items since January. We piled items up in our sun porch as we slowly organized almost every room in our house. I priced the items about 2 weeks before the sale.

5. People buy weird things and they pass on nice things.

6. Mitten and coat sales increase in cold weather: price accordingly.

7. It's okay to have a 1 day sale. We only made about $100 on our second day and I stood in the cold for about 4 hours to earn it. We were so picked over by the end of the second day, I closed about an hour earlier than I planned. If I had to do it again, I probably would have still opened on the second day because it was all set up already and $100 is $100. It was cold though. So cold.

8. It's not fun to miss out on attending garage sales because you are hosting your own. Bill might have to take a vacation day next year if we have a garage sale, so I can go shopping!!

Rest of the weekend mini-recap:

I did get to a few garage sales on Saturday morning. Here are the goods (including a quick trip to Kohl's):

Pair of brass lamps for $3 at a Church sale. Pink photo cube box: 50 cents at a Garage Sale offering 50% off prices. White photo cube set: $2.50 at a Garage Sale offering 50% off prices.

Black letter C $1.81 at Kohl's with 30% off code and small candle in front of 'C' was $1.40 at Kohl's with discount (I had to make a $3 purchase to receive $10 in Kohl's Cash because my previous purchase at Kohl's earlier in the week was just shy of reaching the balance required to earn another $10 in Kohl's Cash. The cashier informed me that they combine receipts during that sale, so I could return to the store and purchase $3 in merchandise to earn $10 in Kohl's Cash. I actually made $7 by buying the 'C' and candle:))

Palm Tree: $2 at a different Church Sale. I'm kicking myself for not getting a second one at that price. I have a black thumb. See:

$2 plants seem like a good idea for me:).

I also picked up a bag full of goodies at a garage sale:

It was a weird garage sale because it had lots of unused craft items for sale. It was kind of like a Michael's store in some one's garage.

I received my first issue of Fresh Home magazine which I posted about here. I really enjoyed reading this!

We watched one movie this weekend, Life As We Know It. It was a child-focused romantic comedy, so I, of course, loved it:). Being a parent of young kiddos, I pretty much cried on and off the whole movie. Katherine Heigl's character was annoying in parts, but overall, I enjoyed it.

Paint projects: