Peter and I had our yard sale on May 23 – exactly a week before we moved. Overall we would say it was a success. In eight hours we made about $800. This, paired with the previous craigslist selling of single items – mostly furniture – rounded out our profits to about $1,300. Not too shabby, and it was plenty to pay our gas for the trip and go toward our rent on the temporary place we’re staying in Portland.

May is a very unpredictable month in St. Louis regarding weather (though all months in St. Louis are, really). Peter and I married in May and barely escaped rainshowers for our outdoor wedding so we know this all too well. We watched the weather closely for the day of the sale, and the outlook was good. Weather.com and Accuweather agreed that rain wouldn’t fall til mid afternoon. Since our sale was for 7am-3pm, this was great.

Well at 8am a clap of thunder sounded and it rained on our stuff for almost an hour. Peter had the foresight to erect a canopy over our sale table so we ran and put a bunch of stuff under the canopy when it started raining. There was quite a bit of furniture, however, and we had to scramble for tarps and towels to cover them with, as well as the boxes of books and movies.

So, the most important ingredient in preparing for a yard sale is: time. It takes a lot of time to go through your stuff, categorize everything and sticker it. For several weeks leading up to the move we designated our guest room as the “yard sale room”. As we packed items into boxes and ran across things we wanted to sell, we would just stick them in the room. As it got closer to the yard sale date, I started categorizing and pricing.

Other important things to have on hand: Trash can, plastic bags (we saved em up for several weeks for this purpose), a chair to sit during down-time. Markers, Tape, Scissors, etc come in handy when you want to go change prices or if a pricetag falls off. Packaging paper was nice to have at the table to wrap fragile items that people purchased. The towel was used to wipe down items that got rained on. And like I said, a canopy is great for where you are sitting. It shields you from rain and keeps you from getting cooked in the sun.

A few people we asked said we should have a lot of change on hand, which we got at the bank the day before. But we never actually needed any of it. For the most part people paid with exact change and small bills. Of course that’s because we had the change – you know if we hadn’t gotten change people would’ve paid with large bills! So I am glad we had it for back-up. Rather than use a change drawer, I purchased a 99¢ tool apron from Lowe’s hardware store and kept money in there. I periodically went in the house to put away money so I wasn’t carrying around a bunch. But it was very nice to have the money on me at all times and be mobile with it.

We bought a few signs to stick in the ground to direct people to our sale. Here’s a hint you can learn from our mistake: Buy a sign that has two stakes, not one. Because we had some signs with one stake and a gust of wind would whirl them around. Not too good for a directional sign. We stuck the signs out on the Friday night before the sale. About 5 days before the sale I put a notice on the Craigslist yard sales section with a description of some items we would have as well as the enticement of the FREE STUFF Box I promised would be there (which we did have!).  I made sure to put “No Earlybirds” on the ad and signs. I have heard that people will show up absurdly early or even days before to try and get first dibs. We were preparing til the last minute so I didn’t want this. Actually we were preparing past the last minute and well into the day, as I was still pricing stuff and putting it on tables. Here are some more photos:

Tables came in handy! We had to borrow one from a neighbor also.

Clothing was what we sold the least of. Maybe our prices were too high? Or maybe there were so many clothes it was just overwhelming to go through. Not sure. I did categorize them by type and size on the hanger rack though.

We had no issues selling plastic clothing hangers!

This is one of my favorite memories of the day. Peter was making a sign directing people to the back of our house where the furniture was. He had a brain fart and misspelled Furniture, so I added an apostrophe and some fancy cursive and made it, uh, foreign. Classy. Hilarious.

People actually bought my old trophies!

Other highlights included our friends sitting and chatting for awhile to pass the time, a kid buying a painting I made (now I’m a professional artist!), and the day finally being over. It was a lot of work!

The next day I boxed up all the unpurchased items and took them to my friend Karen’s house, who so kindly volunteered to give them to a charity she donates to.