Garage Sale Season: Having My First Garage Sale Ever

First thing I’ll say…I’ll never do that again. That’s not to say my experience having a garage sale wasn’t positive. Because it was - I had one on one time with my family, and my best friend who helped me. Her presence was a total comfort and her experience and help was so greatly appreciated.

Really, this garage sale was the second part of a mental process for me. The first part was parting with all my stuff. I have this problem with sentimentality. I attach meaning and special value to all of my material possessions. Is that healthy? Probably not. So in this process of Swedish death cleaning that I began at the beginning of summer, I had to constantly ask myself: “If we had a fire, and this stuff was gone, would it really matter?”

I really began this whole process with a mental declutter and a mental clarity mindset. My “stuff” makes me so anxious and stressed out that 1. It’s just sitting in my basement, not being used and 2. I knew I had to deal with it at some point. (Whether now or later when we had to move).

One of the questions I had before we started the garage sale was how important is it to label stuff with prices. And for that matter, how do you determine the value? I did a lot of research and the general rule is to value garage sale items at 10% of their original purchase price. I think it’s also determined by how motivated you are to get rid of your stuff and how much attachment you have to it. You can’t go into a garage sale, thinking, “Well, I paid thousands of dollars for this stuff, so I’m not going to accept anything lower than what I ask”.

There were many times where people would want multiple items and then give me a general price for everything, and I took it. In the end, whatever we didn’t sell went to the Salvation Army and the local women’s shelter anyway.

Another thing to think about when you have a garage sale is the area in which you are selling your items. We live in a neighborhood where there are a lot of lower income people, so we expected that we would be brought down a lot in price. This was a good expectation. There was also some worry that people would try to steal things. It’s difficult when there are lots of people in a small space and you can’t pay attention to everything at once. One would say, “ Why does it matter? It’s not like it’s worth much, or you want to get rid of the stuff anyway”. While all that is true, you still expect people to behave with honesty and truthfulness.

One thing that I didn’t expect is the items I valued least sold first. We had some ugly statues and ugly paintings and surprisingly, they were snapped up with gusto. I had quite a few brush pens and makeup brushes, and they were quite popular. Many of my books sold, especially the Clive Cussler hard covers. I had an opportunity to sell my scrap book stuff. For thousands of dollars worth of stuff, I asked for $50 for everything. Someone tried talking me down to $10 and I said forget it. There are some things I just wasn’t willing to give away for free.

If you guys have any questions about my experience about what it was like to have a garage sale, please feel free to ask. It’s helpful to get tips, especially if you have never had one before. I would say it’s key to get help from people, especially to watch your kids if you have any. 😀

Thanks for reading and we’ll see you next week!

Sandra