Blogging Away Debt Our Journeys to a Debt-Free Life

by Tricia

Yesterday, I discussed the items that sold like hotcakes. Today I’ll detail the things at my garage sale that didn’t very well at all and ended up being ones that barely anyone looked at.

Books – We had a ton of adult and children books to sell and we only sold a few of them. Most people strolled right by the section without stopping. Sort of a bummer because we have so many books. That could have been part of the problem, though. The next garage sale we have I will try to display them better (out on a table versus a shelf) and see if that helps.

Christmas Items – I knew this one wouldn’t be a big seller because almost all of the garage sales I go to have Christmas items left late in the day. I’m not sure how to get rid of these except for maybe offering them dirt cheap or putting them in the “free” bin.

Clothes – I had done a lot of what I said when I wrote about selling clothes. The major thing I couldn’t do was hang everything because I ran out of hangers and room. I think there was too much there and that lead people to pass right on by. Yesterday, I boxed up a lot of the clothes and gave them to St. Vincent de Paul. By thinning out the clothes, I hope that will help highlight what is left and help them to sell. I can also get all of them on hangers now.

I want our next garage sale to be awesome in terms of getting rid of what we have left. Since most of our “hot” items are gone, we are going to have to try to make these “not so hot” items more attractive. I think a major part of that will be the presentation of these items to where it works to make people to stop and look versus passing them by.

I’m not sure exactly how to do that, though, so I’m glad I have some time to think about it. If you have any suggestions, I’m all ears 🙂

by Tricia

Looking across our garage sale spread, I realized that we had quite the assortment of items. From clothing to electronics to household nick-naks, there was something for almost everyone. Only a few people left without buying a single thing.

There were definitely the “hot” items, though. I’m sure a garage sale “hot” item list will vary by location, but here’s what I found were the best sellers after having two garage sales:

Wild Bird Items – I had some wild bird seed dumped into a container. I never used all of it so I decided to put it in plastic bags and sell it. Another person’s trash is another person’s treasure, right? Well, those baggies were one of the first things to go. I sort of wish now I put a higher price on it. I also had some hummingbird feeders in a very used condition and they were gone within the first 1/2 hour.

Electronic Equipment – We had a speaker and receiver set priced to sell and it did within 1/2 an hour. There was even a problem with one of the speakers but the buyer didn’t care. Again, I wish I had priced the set a little bit higher but a part of me is glad to see them go. We hadn’t used it in over 6 years.

Tool-ish Type Things – My husband decided to sell his work light kit and the first male to arrive at our sale snatched that up. I wish that we had more tools to sell because a few people asked if we had tools. A big project for me before our next sale is to go through all of our tools and see what we have duplicates of. We have a bad habit of buying something that we need only to find out that we already had it. That’s due to bad organizing of what we have.

Halloween Goodies – For a while there, I wanted the coolest house on the block at Halloween time and I bought some neat Halloween decorations. That lasted for a year and then I didn’t put up the decorations anymore because it became too much work and we weren’t even home on Halloween to give out candy. We decided to get rid of everything except for one light-up pumpkin and one battery powered light that goes inside a carved pumpkin. I’m glad we did that because those items sold quite well. Even the Halloween-themed stuffed animals I had sold.

So there’s my “hot” item list for my garage sale. I still have a few things left in my home that fit those categories so I plan on putting more out for our next (and last) garage sale of the year. It feels so good to be getting rid of the stuff in our life that I might as well put out some more of it that will sell 🙂

Next up, I’ll go over the “not so hot” items.