Huge Moving Sale!

After  spending the past 4 months going through every inch of  the “My Cottage of Bliss” house, garage and backyard storage sheds weeding stuff out…

and weeks of cleaning, pricing and organizing items…

this past Friday and Saturday we held our

And what a GREAT yard sale it was too!  

It was extremely successful  and profitable.  Probably 85% of the items I was trying to get rid of sold and we made a little over $1300.00.

Yes, $1300.00!  And it’s not like that included a lot of big ticket items either.  There was one item that sold for $125.00 and there were a few $10,  $20 or $30 items but the rest of that total was reached by selling items that were marked $4.00 or less!   

I knew I had purged a lot of stuff but…really?!

Having a yard sale is an eye-opening experience on many different levels,  but particularly when it comes to human behavior.  Of course, we had  several of **those** people—the ones who make you want to pull your hair out when they insist you sell them a pile of stuff for $1.00 and then get indigent when you say no.  But we had a lot of really nice, friendly, polite  people too.  I can’t even count how many people said it was one of the nicest, cleanest, most organized and/or most reasonably priced yard sales they had ever been to.  That almost made all the hours of preparation I put into it worth it right there.

I had put ads on Craigslist and in the local newspaper, listing  the start time of the yard sale as 9:00 a.m. Friday.  Knowing full well people would be showing up earlier than 9:00, we were outside setting up by 5:45 a.m.  I don’t think I’ve been up that early since I quit working.  It was still dark!  As soon as daylight started to break, passing cars began slowing down to look and  before 8:00 a.m., there was already a crowd of people in line to pay for stuff they wanted to buy.  It was crazy!

We used  8  large tables  and still didn’t have enough room so the overflow was displayed under the tables  and around the yard.  It was kind of interesting to see what was hot and what was not.

All of my daughter’s old toys--Teddy Ruxpin bear, Barbies, miscellaneous other dolls, dollhouse etc.--FLEW off the tables.  Completely gone within  the first 2 hours or so.   Her old crib,  rocking chair and table and chair set went fairly quickly too.

 

Faux flowers and plants were definitely on the list of “hot,” in-demand items.  With the exception of one fall season arrangement, they were all gone in a blink of  an eye.   We’ve all heard how the  professional decorators have proclaimed using fake flowers and plants is a huge decorating no-no but it was clear to me this weekend  a lot of people either haven’t heard that, or they simply don’t care what the decorators think!  ;)

In the past, I’ve had pretty good luck selling clothes so I was a little surprised very few of my name brand career  jackets and tops sold, despite being priced in the $2.00 to $5.00 range. 

I also had a lot of cute Christmas decorations that didn’t generate much interest, including a 2 ft. tabletop white tree that I had only used once or twice.  Wrong time of year for people to be thinking about Christmas, I guess.

There are still a few pieces of furniture I hope will sell on Craigslist but I am extremely pleased my life is a whole lot less cluttered and my bank account is $1300 richer.  A definite win-win in my book!