Friday, April 27, 2012

Garage Sales

Every year, I am inspired to have a garage sale.  Every year I also ask myself "WHY?????"

This year is no different.  I used to pay for garage sale ads but after years of paying more for the ad than I would bring in, I decided to just "wing it" and place signs around the neighborhood and hope for the best.  What didn't sell would be donated. I also decided to approach it more like a business and set up my junk valuable goods in displays that would attract buyers. Mother's Day is coming up so that was the theme I used.

Yesterday, the first day, I had quite a bit of traffic come through.  Unfortunately they were looking for particular items I did not have.  They were polite and possessed much more self discipline than I have as they left without buying anything at all. Not even a 25 cent picture frame that had never been used! Everyone needs extra picture frames!  Even the kind with basketballs on it.

Halfway through the day, I started asking myself, "What would Martha Stewart do?" And that inspired me to find out and it must have helped. Martha has a lot of sites listed for what you can do with everything you want to get rid of. You can find that list on www.MarthaStewart.com and search for garage sale ideas.While Martha suggested painting garage walls, I couldn't very well do that this time, but I will keep that in mind for next year.  She did have a lot of craft ideas on her site so I got one of my quilts out and set it beside some old clothing and suggested they use the clothes to make a quilt! I took some of the clay pots I had painted and set them beside about 50 clay pots I am trying to sell and gave people ideas for how they could purchase all those pots for just $5.00 and create beautiful gifts!

Someone asked me if my quilt was for sale. I said "no - it is just a sample of what you can do with all of these t-shirts and jeans".  I could have sold the quilt for $2. Nobody wanted to buy the unpainted pots, but I did sell one of my samples for 50 cents.

At the end of my first day, I had made $5.50!!!  25 cents was from my husband who bought back 5 of the many hangers I had taken from his closet to put in the sale.

I guess I cleaned too much.

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