It's Garage Sale Season

My daughter realized today that August is nearly upon us, which, in her mind, means first and foremost that a return to college (much anticipated, as best as I can tell) is rapidly approaching. I’ve always thought that “back to school” time was the best time to organize a garage sale, at least for those of us living near large numbers of college students. College students setting up households are often out en masse on Saturday mornings around the beginning of the school year looking for all sorts of used, cheap pieces of furniture, kitchen supplies and, sometimes, even clothes.

If you’ve been thinking about arranging a garage sale sometime, why not get started right now? Here are some tips that I have found useful over the years.

• Figure out what to sell. I operate under the “when in doubt, throw it out” school, which, in garage sale language, translates into “if it’s covered in dust, put a price tag on it.”
• Begin on Saturday. Set a start time, then be prepared to start even earlier to accommodate early birds. The point of the sale, after all, is to sell.
• Set reasonable prices. Leave any emotional ties you may have to an object completely out of the pricing decision, since your buyers won’t care. Instead, ask yourself how much you would pay at someone else’s sale.
• Have plenty of cash on hand to make change.
• Advertise. If people don’t know about the sale, they won’t come.