How To Host A Successful Pre-Move Garage Sale

If there is a thing that is often true about moving, it is that it is an ideal opportunity to dispose of belongings you no more want or need. And while you could just dispose, recycle, or donate those things, throwing a pre-move sale is a great way to dispose of things and also make additional money to pay for those moving expenses. There are also more advantages to pre-move yard sales than just making some quick buck. What are they?

The fewer items you plan to load on the moving vehicle, the lighter the shipment and the cheaper your relocation will be. Also, you will spend more time packing and unpacking your stuff that you don’t even want to use anymore.

These sales can be profitable, but they can also be daunting, because of the many logistics involved. From getting ready for your sale to closing it down, we have prepared these proven tips to help make the process easy and enable you to make more money for all your efforts.

8 Tips for Throwing a Successful Pre-Move Garage Sale

1. Take Inventory of your Home

The first thing you should do is to determine what you have. And it is beyond just searching your bedroom. Compress your house into a system, categorized by room; gather everything you don’t use every day. Remove everything from the closets, take out everything from the drawers, and remove the boxes from the basement and attic. Immediately backup arrives, begin to separate your belongings into three categories (keep, sell, and donate).

Be ready to spend some time doing this. You will possibly find a few letters, pictures, and trophies that will take you down memory lane when you were young, have tighter abs, and fewer wrinkles. You should know the category to put them.

2. Set a Date and Time

Be smart in your decision on the date and time to perform the sale. The best day is during the weekend, particularly a Saturday morning. Spring is often the perfect time for throwing a yard sale since the weather is completely changing and people are excited to be outside. Don’t host a pre-move yard sale on a holiday or a day when there is a huge event going on in your town, such as a big sporting event. As regards timing, begin in the morning and let it run through the afternoon. And be ready for early birds who may arrive early before the set start time.

3. Consult the Local Authorities

You are likely going to face any trouble throwing a yard sale, but contact your local city hall and ask about whether there is a special permit required or if there are some rules or regulations you need to know of. Do this around 3-4 weeks out, so that if you have to obtain a permit or make some other preparations you have time to find out everything.

4. Form a Team with Friends and Neighbors

Throwing a successful pre-move yard sale alone is hard work and things may start to turn daunting for you to handle the entire details of the proposed garage sale. This is why; before you do anything, it is important to ask friends and neighbors if they are also arranging a garage sale so you can form a team and combine a few yard sales.

Tip: Strength in numbers

The advantage of throwing a bigger garage sale before a move is that combined efforts will be formed to schedule, network, and resources a larger scale event that will bring more people (possible buyers) and will yield more profits in return. To avoid mistakes during a combined moving sale, paste initials of each seller on the price stickers to know which seller sold what.

5. Advertise your Garage Sale

To host a successful yard sale before you move, you must consider the best way to market your moving sale as a part of the preparation phase. Regrettably, you need proper advertising as people won’t know you are throwing a yard sale, and so, no one will come. It is as simple as that.

Below are means of advertising your garage sale:

Online advertising: It is often free, so start doing it. Consider social networks in promoting your next moving sale, making a Facebook event can also be of greater help in advertising your proposed sale among your friends. In addition, use specialized websites like Garage Sale Tracker, Craigslist, or Yard Sale Search to advertise the sale.
Local newspaper advert: This is good but it will cost you some money. Regardless of the option, you choose to get words of your sale out, ensure you place a lot of pictures in the ads: photos of the most attractive belongings you plan to dispose of before moving.

6. Price your Things Appropriately

Our tips of throwing a successful yard sale before your move to a new location continue with the important topic of pricing your items so that it can sell. Avoid pricing the items you are selling too high, else, they won’t sell. It is vital to remember that you can’t recover the money you had spent to buy those items.

When pricing your items, follow these tips:

The major purpose of hosting a garage sale is to get the items out of your life before the move so we advise you to price the items reasonably. Thirty percent of the retail price is a nice way to begin but there are lots of factors that can affect the price.
Price easy item you want to sell: yes, each of the items. Of course, each pricing will require time but that will make everything easier for your customers to buy your stuff. Many people don’t like to ask for the price constantly, and some of them won’t even bother. Use price tags or stickers that show prices clearly, so that all the prices are available on the items that way.
Make sure the prices are simple using increment steps of $1 and 50 cent.
Ensure you have lots of change. Start with small bills that cost $100 to enable you to break large bills and provide change.

7. Get Ready to Bargain on the Prices

Talking about moving sale tips, you should be prepared to bargain over the prices of your items during your moving sale. Many people will come with the mind to haggle, and that is expected, being a part of the game. After all, there is no fixed price so some smart negotiating tactics from you will be helpful.

Know the smallest price you are willing to receive from your nice belongings and then add from ten to twenty percent to have a nice foundation for negotiating.
Be polite all the time: don’t allow yourself to be insulted by those asking you to reduce the price as many of them have come for actual bargains and long-forgotten items. be prepared to reduce some prices but maintain your ground for items you know are worth the tagged price.
Paste ‘fixed’ tags on items that you won’t bring their prices down. Be ready to still be asked to reduce the cost. It is ok; take it as your chance to convince them of the worth of these fixed-price items.
Offer special package pricing to dispose of some items at once and avoid bargains that are not necessary.

8. Make your Moving Sale Environment Safe

Declutter your household before you proceed with a moving sale while keeping a high level of safety all through the event. It is necessary to sell as many belongings as possible but it is also highly important to avoid any accidents or injuries during the yard sale.

Below are a few tips to assure safety when throwing a successful yard sale. Little children and even pets will likely be running around your sale venue one time so ensure there are no dangers in and around the spot.

Safety tips:

Ensure valuable belongings are kept close to your home so that you can have your eyes on them at all times. If you have highly valuable belongings, then try selling them online instead of at your garage sale where most of the buyers will be looking to haggle down the price.
Remove any belongings that are not for sale, especially if you are throwing your pre-move sale in your garage and not in the yard outdoor. On the other hand, they seal those areas or items using rope and paste stickers or signs.
Lock your home. Do not by any chance allow any strangers into your house.
Keep the money in a fanny pack – do not use a cash box since it can attract thieves. Sadly, not everyone who attends garage sales has the best of intentions.
Accept only cash. Do not take checks since it is difficult to track bad checks.
Make sure the money is in sight until you can provide the change. This will help avoid confusion if anyone claims they’ve given you $20 when it is a $10 bill they gave you.
Take the large amounts of cash inside to reduce the money in your fanny pack to the lowest.

Things to do on the Day of your Pre-Move Garage Sale

To reduce stress and improve profit, you will need to organize the right type of garage sale environment that will cause people to hang around for more time and buy more items.

The use of more tables to arrange your items is likely one of the best tips and tricks for garage sales. That is correct – gather as many tables as possible from neighbors and friends to make the items well presentable and more accessible.
Arrange and group similar items baby stuff, shoes, CDs, kitchen items, children's toys, clothing, power tools, electric items, and so on. Don’t forget that your moving sale arrangement should make sense to people. If your sale appears completely random and disorganized, people will not hang around for more time, and thus you will lose possible buyers. On the contrary, if all your items are organized, clean, tidy, and clear, then anyone who’s attending your garage sale will hang around and buy more items.
Hang any pieces of clothing you have for sale: Avoid just stacking them in large boxes and expect potential buyers to dig them out. Use all the hangers you have to display the clothes nicely as if they were in a clothes store.
Draw passers-by into your garage sale by placing different attractive items at the base of your driveway and closer to the main street. Consider expensive items like furniture pieces or electronic devices. Bring in people, don’t just sit inside your garage and wait for people to come to you.
Make potential buyers feel invited by playing calm background music, especially at the start of the moving sale to define the tone and make it more relaxed and informal. Don’t forget that silence can be boring.
Add charisma and charm to your garage sale: place beautiful flowers everywhere, tie up some beautiful balloons, or consider other creative means of making your sake highly inviting.
Prepare a cooler and offer (not for free) cold bottled water or other nice beverages if the weather is hot on the day of the sale.
Try to place many air fresheners to combat bad odors or the musty smells coming from cardboard boxes or some older belongings. This additional step can make a difference sometimes. Welcome moving-sale shoppers as they come to your garage sale so that they can know the person in charge.
Make an extension cord available so that participants of your sale can test electrical items or power tools. This is so much essential since most people don’t know you so they don’t know if they should trust your items. t times, they will want to see that they are buying perfectly-working electronic devices.
Prepare a mirror for the people who are purchasing clothes and accessories.
Have some batteries available for testing any kid’s toys or small appliances.
Have plastic bags ready to give buyers who have bought many items. This will make sure they don’t juggle with many items until they get to their cars. It is also a nice idea to save up your groceries' plastic bags.
Have some stacks of packing paper to wrap any delicate items for your buyers.
Make a moving cost calculator available for easy calculations with no error.
Get some pens and writing a paper in case anyone wants to write something down.
Try to get a box filled with FREE goodies ready to create more interest in your garage sale.
Start your moving sale early to show considerations on your potential customers.
Fanny pack: your money should be close and your fanny pack closer to you.
Free section: there are certain items that no one will buy at your garage sale, doesn’t mean you can’t bring them out, but you don’t need to price them.

Conclusion

A pre-move garage sale is a nice way to dispose of items and earn some additional money, but don’t be too serious about it or allow it to stress you out. Enjoy it, and just consider it a fun and interesting experience. And when it is over, consider donating the rest of the items that are yet to sell instead of packing and moving them, after all, you’ve decided to continue your life without them already.

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