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Life Lesson Learned: Yard sales are a lot of work

‘Tis the season! No, not for Christmas–it’s yard sale season! 

Last summer (for some unknown reason) I thought it would be “fun” to have a yard sale at my house. I guess it’s because I’ve never been on the seller-side as an adult. My parents held a handful throughout my childhood, with the last being my senior year of high school. To show you how “uninvolved” I was, I basically sat outside with my parents and spent the entire day making a study sheet for a final exam. I still helped out when they needed, but the pricing, putting out signs and dealing with customers was entirely on them. 

So when I decided last year I wanted to have one this summer, it quickly transitioned from my sale at my house to my sale at my house with some items my parents could sell (to help create more inventory). Then we decided it would just be easier to do it at their house (especially since they have a garage and I don’t) and combine our efforts into one giant sale. We spent the past year purging and collecting items around the house and storing them in my parent’s attic. I don’t think I really grasped just how much stuff we were going to have at our sale until April when I helped them bring everything down to the garage. (And it probably would have been even more if I hadn’t already done decluttering before and after moving back from New Jersey). I’m pretty sure we made an Amazon warehouse look tiny… 

About 4-6 weeks before we wanted to have our sale, we began the long and tedious process of organizing and pricing. And by we, I meant my amazing mom who spent many long days turning their garage into the equivalent of a well-organized department store. I had promised to come over and help, but since a lot of what we were selling came from her and my dad, she said there wasn’t much I could do in terms of pricing anyway. (Of course I did take care of pricing my own items!) 

Since we probably had a world record for largest small town sale in history, my mom suggested we call it an Attic-Clean Out Yard Sale so it stood out from the rest. I mean, it certainly wasn’t untrue. Besides, yard sales with catchy names help draw in the crowds. (Or at least give people a laugh!)

It seems that the clever marketing (and useful photos) worked because when I posted our sale on Facebook Marketplace the Monday beforehand, views quickly skyrocketed. Of course, the messages quickly followed. “Do you have video games?” “ How much is the furniture?” “What’s the lowest offer you’ll take on that item?” (Yes, someone actually had the nerve to ask that about a dishware set. Sigh). I refused to answer any of the messages, because the whole point of advertising the sale is to get people to come to it! It doesn’t mean they’ll buy anything, but if they don’t come at all because you tell them you don’t have a specific item then you definitely won’t make a sale! By the time the sale was over, we had received 663 clicks on our listing, which is still mind-blowing to me. (Spoiler alert: we did not have that many actually show up–I wish!) 

My mom and I had carefully monitored the weather in the week leading up to the sale, but since it seems meteorologists are hardly accurate about the current weather (Aka: “There’s a 30% chance that it’s already raining”) we changed our minds at least three times about whether or not to go ahead with it or postpone until Memorial Day weekend.(Yes, we were technically having a garage sale, but we had a lot of items that needed to go into the driveway. Not to mention, few people want to go out and shop during a monsoon!) Thankfully the Friday before the sale it looked like any chance of rain on Saturday would end by lunch so we decided to go ahead and risk it. 

Naturally, we woke up that morning (earlier than I even get up for work now–go figure!) to dumping rain outside. Ugh. We knew there was a strong chance it would, but can you blame us for being hopeful that the forecast would be wrong? So we waited around for what felt like six hours until it looked like the rain had passed. We were supposed to open the sale at 9 as advertised on our signs, but ended up delaying until 10 when the weather was clear. I’m just grateful that we only lost an hour, so can’t complain there!

We actually got a customer right at opening and, luckily for me, the first thing she grabbed was a set of outdoor planters the sellers of my house had left behind when they moved. Huzzah! An easy $5 for something I never even bought! 

The three of us had our own “roles” throughout the weekend. (You can see mine as illustrated by my mom’s adorable sale “map.”)

I was in charge of the cash box and bagging items, and my mom helped straighten things and write down what was sold so we could keep track of dividing the profits later. (The initial plan was for me to write down that info but I quickly realized that trying to give change and use a clipboard resulted in a bunch of illegible writing that looked like it was scribbled by a toddler). My dad’s role was (in his words) to not be a jinx and stay out of the way because we made most of our sales when he wasn’t around. (And then at one point when he was in charge while I ran back to my house for lunch, he handled the cashbox and forgot to write down an item. Thankfully we were able to figure out what had sold based on our photos on the Marketplace listing. So after that incident we told him he was “fired.”)

I had come fully prepared to the sale with items to keep myself busy in between customers, but thankfully we rarely had a lull. In fact, we seemed to have most showing up in waves. One car would turn into three others, people would look around, and then by the time the last person would leave, I’d have enough time to help my mom straighten up and/or grab a snack before the next person showed up. 

Traffic generally stayed consistent until around dinner time. We decided to use Domino’s pizza gift cards we had from Christmas so we could enjoy the leftovers the next night too. Let’s face it, yard sales are a perfect excuse to treat yourself to some fast food. (Though we joked that half of my parents’ profits were going towards their dinner). 

For some unknown reason, most yard sales in my town close at 2 p.m. This has been a massive pet peeve of ours because not only does it make it difficult to get to sales as a shopper, but the people hosting them might be missing out on even more profit. Our family has never done that for any of our sales. We will stay open until dark if it means more business! Plus, my parents live incredibly close to the township park so it’s common for them to get foot traffic of people walking up to the park to see the lake. 

Unfortunately, that didn’t matter much this year as we only got one customer after dinner hours, prompting us to close at 7. Luckily, we knew we were supposed to have beautiful weather on Sunday so we didn’t feel the need to drag things out. Besides, ending a bit “early” gave us a chance to catch up on sleep. (For me, this meant unintentionally passing out on the couch at 9:30. Whoops!)

Day two of the sale had a much more positive start! We were able to start on time and get everything out to the driveway without worrying we were going to get hit with a  sudden monsoon. Plus, since we had managed to sell quite a few of the larger items the previous day, there was far less we had to drag out from the garage.

Sadly we weren’t suddenly flooded with customers the second we opened. In fact, the first hour was completely dead, minus a few drive-by’s. I began to joke that maybe if I looked like I was a customer it would start to draw in the crowds. Ironically, our first wave of people arrived shortly after. (That ended up being the case all day—short spurts of nothing, then suddenly 10 cars within a 20-minute period). We also noticed that our second day crowd seemed more interested in things that were completely ignored on Saturday, like clothes and holiday decor. We could barely give any of that away the previous day! 

Mom and I were both flattered by the number of people who offered up compliments on what we had to offer, even if they didn’t buy anything. We have actually said the same thing at some other sales we’ve been to; sometimes people might have a great variety or quality items, but they’re just not a great fit for either of us! 

Business stayed steady most of the day until around dinner time again, when Mom and I ended up passing the time by playing hangman. I will say that was the first time all day that I actually even had time to get involved in anything that wasn’t chatting with customers or answering questions. 

When it became clear that things were winding down, Mom and I went in the house to start adding up our profits and dividing up the cash. I will say I made more than I thought I would, but I still only sold about half of the items that I had actually put into the sale. (My parents made quite a bit more cash than me, but unfortunately they too had a lot of items leftover. Almost everything left went to charity!). Also, I’m quite grateful that we were able to even have a two-day sale, because our last one in 2011 got rained out on the second day. (And don’t even get me started on our traumatic rainstorm incident at the community sale.) 

So…was the entire experience worth it? I’m not sure. I learned a lot, and I can check it off my “things I want to try as an adult” list. But when you take pride in having a good yard sale, and have a lot of merchandise to sell, it very much becomes high effort, low reward. 

But hey, at least I earned some cash for summer festivals, new tap shoes for the fall, or, you know…shopping at yard sales. (I have a problem, okay?)

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Life Lesson Learned: Sometimes, it’s all about the view

During my time in the NYC area, a few different neighborhoods quickly became favorites. One of those was DUMBO in Brooklyn, which I’ve blogged about numerous times. It reminded me of Hoboken in a lot of ways: quaint shops, great places to eat and stunning views of the water and Manhattan. 

One cloudy June day in 2017 I hopped on the subway out there for a brief visit and to see the Brooklyn Flea (or maybe it was the other way around and I happened to run into the market while I was there? I’m an old lady at 30 now, so my memory isn’t what it used to be!)

I rarely, if ever, find anything to buy at flea markets…including those in Ohio. Yard sales are where I have the most luck! But still, they can be fun to peruse and often offer up some great photo ops while you’re browsing around. 

This particular market certainly had a “wow” factor. Getting to look at vendor booths under the Manhattan Bridge? I mean, how much cooler can you get?  They probably could have had nothing but rocks being sold in the DUMBO archway and I would have thought it was spectacular. 

As usual, I found myself quickly overwhelmed by everything there was to look at, so I haphazardly snapped photos of random finds just to document my experience. “Random vintage books? Okay!” “Large metal numbers? Sure why not?”

The weather was a bit gloomy for that experience, so I was thrilled to go back the following summer on a much sunnier day. Unfortunately, it was also much hotter that day. I vividly remember being grateful for the shade of the overpass so I could escape the hot August sun. 

Once again there were a number of quirky items that were worthy of a photo, even if I wasn’t on the hunt for collectibles or antiques.

The flea market is actually held weekly, but once per summer seemed to be enough to scratch my DUMBO sight-seeing itch. And let’s be honest, my flea market visits were never intended to be shopping trips. They were just another excuse to marvel at the views of the bridge! (And of course, stop by Shake Shack afterwards for lunch)