Raise your hand if you’ve ever held a garage sale or even multiple garage sales.
Kudos to you for following through with the monumental task of collecting up all of your stuff, finding a day in your schedule that worked to have the sale, then enduring hours of haggling. After all was said and done, you then boxed up all of the stuff that didn’t sell.
I’m exhausted just typing out all of those steps! Good job dealing with all of that! But what’d you do with the boxes then? Did they just sit in your home until the next garage sale? (Did that next garage sale ever happen?)
On the flip side, have you ever planned to have a garage sale, and kept mounds of stuff around to sell, but the garage sale never actually happened?
Turns out, you’re not alone, my friend. This happens all the time.
What’s that? Our best intentions turn into clutter. And the clutter holds us back from doing or having what we truly want in life. All of the stuff you’re keeping in anticipation of having a garage sale is most likely cluttering up your life.
So before you decide to have a garage sale, think about this: is it really worth your time to do everything you gotta do in order to have a successful sale?
Your intentions of having garage sales is good, but may be contributing to your overall lack of organization
Take an honest look at your things. How much would you pay for the item at a garage sale?
If the entirety of all that you’ve decided to sell is less than what you’d consider it’d be worth it on a good day, then maybe you’d be better off donating the stuff instead and taking the charitable donation tax-write off. Because time is money!
For me that number has to be north of $250.
But that’s because what I know to be true in life is this: what you expect will sell right away at a garage sale never actually does.
It’s true! The stuff you almost tossed into the donation pile is what gets snapped up faster than a hot Krispy Kreme donut.
If it’s worth it
If you decide that yes, you do want to have a garage sale, then this is what you have to do:
1. Pick a date. NOW. and keep checking to make that date works. Consider the weather too and maybe even pick a back up date.
2. Corral all of your stuff in one area of your home. Don’t let items live out and about with everything else. It’s just clutter at this point if that happens. Get it all in one place and out of the way. It’ll make setting up for the sale a lot easier.
3. Make a plan for what to do with anything that doesn’t sell. May I suggest scheduling a donation pick up with the fine folks at DonateStuff.com the day after your sale? If it didn’t sell, let it go. It’s simply not worth it to keep trying to sell stuff that no one wants any more.
If not a garage sale, then what?
And of all of the garage sales I’ve ever had, I know that it was only worth my time once. So for me, I’ve decided to never have a garage sale again. Does that mean that I donate or give away all of the things I no longer want/need? Nope. I’ve just figured out a better way.
Watch this video
So, what do you think? Will having a garage sale help you get organized? Or could it sabotage your organizing efforts? I dig a little deeper into this issue in this video! Watch it and get some great advice before you decide to have a garage sale!
Do this instead!
Sell your items online for more money and less hassle!
This guide tells you everything you need to know!
