Conquer Clutter: The Results!

In last week’s post, I shared that Dustin and I were fed up with all the clutter and toys around the house. We made the decision to get rid of 1,000 items before 2017. We decided to set a goal for ourselves because we needed something to push us to get rid of as much stuff as possible. We had less than a week to set up and prepare for our garage sale!

My initial idea was to have Dustin work the garage sale while I was inside taking care of the kids. Dustin thought we would need help, so he suggested that he ask his parents to come up for the weekend. And of course, he was right! Friday night when we got home I was exhausted from work. And I just felt overwhelmed that the garage sale was the next morning and we hadn’t priced a single thing.

Thankfully Dustin’s parents drove up and they helped us with the kids. After we put the kids to bed, our friends and Dustin’s parents helped us organize everything on the tables and price everything as well. By midnight we were able to get everything priced, organized, and set inside the garage so that in the morning, we would just need to pull everything out from there.

Dustin’s mom and I took turns the next day taking care of the kids while the other helped Dustin and his dad at the sale. Dustin’s parents were also able to bring some stuff to sell well! I think this was great because it gave people that came to the sale more categories to choose from since the majority of our items were toys and baby clothes. Dustin opened the garage door at 6:15 am to people waiting outside and we finished at 3 pm.

Some tips to having a successful garage sale:

• Get help or do a joint garage sale with another family or friend – This is very important because like I said above it gives you more items to sale and with the added help you can get set up quicker and have more hands on deck.
• Have your garage sale when people get paid – I suggest around the 1st or the 15th of the month.
• Have large signs – Whether you buy your signs or make them make sure they are large enough and legible to be read at a distance.
• Put nicer items closest to the road – We were selling our end tables and ottoman and put these closest to the road so that if someone was just passing by they would be more intrigued to stop.

We spent $14.67 on supplies and we profited about $550! We had a lot of items left at 3 pm and decided to let Dustin parents take the remaining items to their church as a donation. Because the end goal here was to clear out clutter and get rid of items that weren’t needed, I was so glad we had this option and that the items that didn’t sell didn’t make their way back into our house.

Not counting all the stuff we threw away, we there away we got rid of 1,128 items!!!!

In the past, I have been very hesitant to do garage sales because you always hear how that they are a lot of work. Don’t get me wrong, it was. Our garage sale wouldn’t have been as successful if we didn’t have the extra help. Since we have such a large family and seem to accumulate more items in regards to outgrown clothes and toys we will definitely be doing garage sales more in the future. This was by far the easiest and fastest way for us to get rid of the items in our home that were not needed.

What about you? Do you have garage sales or like to go to them? What’s been your experience with them? Comment below!