Tips for a Successful Adoption Yard Sale.

We just had a Monster Adoption Yard Sale and it was a huge success. We made over $1400 in 2 days. I wanted to share tips and tricks with other adopting families out there, like mine who are trying to adopt without going into debt.
~First of all, remember that God is your ultimate provider and He will sustain you. You will want for nothing as long as you are walking His path and not your own. 
~ Start collecting things as soon as the idea to have a yard sale comes to mind.
~Purge through everything in your house. Go room to room and decide if you can live without your items or not. Remember, you are trying to make money to bring home your babies.
~Tell your friends and family. Everyone is always cleaning things out, and either throwing them away or bringing them to the thrift stores. Ask them to donate to you, instead of other charities. They will be very happy to give to you, because they know where the donations will be going and knowing that they are contributing something to your adoption. Their house will be cleaner and less cluttered and you will be adding to your collection. Its a win win for everyone! 
~One thing I have learned is to clean what you receive right away. 
~Price stuff right away.
~Organize everything right away. Have boxes for Kitchen, Office, Bathroom, Linens, Toys, and clothes. 
When it comes to clothes, Size them as well. It will make a huge difference and a more enjoyable experience for your shoppers as they wont get discouraged looking for the size they want. Make separate boxes for Women's large, Medium, Small, Women's Pants, Men's Shirts, Pants, Babies, Boys and Girls Clothes.
~When clothes are priced individually people will be less prone to buy clothes. This is a yard sale and they want a deal. People will donate a lot of clothes, and you don't want to end up packing them all up again. 
~Make a sign like this:
Everyone Loves a deal! I used brown paper grocery bags that people could fill. You can cram a lot into that bag if you know how to pack it right. Mention it to your customers. They will love that idea and you can say farewell to even more clothes! Again, its a win win for you and your customer! Also, tell them they can mix and match. Assign one half of your yard as the half that has the clothes, linens, and toys. Tell your customers they can fill the bag with anything on that side. It causes less confusion. 
Put your clothes up on tables. A lot of people get tired of being on the ground trying to fill their bags after a few minutes. Make it easy for them. Secure as many tables as you can. Ask your church or friends and family for any tables they may have. The more tables you have, the more organized it looks. 

~Keep in mind that when you are pricing your items that this is a yard sale. You are trying to make money, but you are also trying to get rid of as much stuff as possible. Remember that $5 and $3 and $2 totals really starts to add up after a while.
When selling CD's,DVD's and cassette tapes (if you are too young to know what that is, go here for a definition and picture) 
Sell them for cheap. I price my CD's at 25cents, my DVD's at $1 and my cassette tapes at 10 cents. There was an elderly gentleman that purchased a couple of cassette tapes that had music on it, that he listened to when he was 12 or 13 years old during World War 2. It was fun to listen to his memories.
Advertising your Yard Sale
This is one of the most key things you need to do. Pay some money to put an add for your adoption Yard Sale in the local newspaper. We had customers that drove half an hour away because of our add. Put it up on Craigslist. Our city has a local Yard Sale group on Facebook that you can advertise on for free. You can also take pictures of things that you already have and try to sell them on there as well. We made about $100 on preyard sale sales on the Facebook page. 
http://www.yardsalesearch.com/You can advertise on this website for free. 
Put it on your blog. Let your followers know that you are having a Yard Sale.
Make huge posters to put up in the area. Mine looked like this:
~Get bright neon poster board. The bigger the sign the better. I used a full sheet and I made 4 of these. My address is underneath the index cards. And my kids did some doodling on it..another person mowed around one of the signs so it had grass pieces all around it. Make plenty of arrow signs in the same color so people associate the colors with your yard sale. 
~When  you are making your signs it will likely be at the last minute...mine was anyways. I cut my sheets of poster board in four pieces for the arrows. I used one of them and I drew and outline of an arrow and then cut it out. I laid the cutout arrow template on top of the blank poster board sheets that I had cut out and I used spray paint that I had laying around and sprayed inside the arrow template and voila an arrow in less than 10 seconds. Then I let it dry in the sun and my arrow signs were done.
~We had our yard sale on a Friday and Saturday, and we made more money on Friday than we did on Saturday. 
~Try and find a pop up tent so that you can have shade to stand under, and your electronics and media have a place to keep cool from the hot sun.
~Be prepared for early birds and dont turn them away. You could turn away money if you do that. We had people show up at 7 am and the sale didnt start till 8. Be prepared.
~Greet everyone with a smile. I promise you will make a difference in their day. and very well make some more money. 

~Share your story. Make a sign. Let people know that you are trying to raise money for your adoption. There wont be as many hagglers. 
~If people try to haggle with you, come to a compromise. If you have bigger items that you are selling, price them a little higher so people can talk you down to the price that they are willing to pay and you were planning to get out of it.
I had a dining room table with a leaf and 4 chairs set that I found on the side of the road. I had $150 for the entire set. Someone only wanted to buy the table, so I broke up the set and sold him the table for $60. It was still 100% profit for me because I found it on the side of the road. 
~On that note. People throw out things like its going out of style. Its OK to look for things on the side of the road. Their trash is your treasured profit. 
Remember though that when you do that,you wear gloves when going through bags. You just never know, and its better to be safe than sorry. 
Post Yard Sale
After your yard sale is all said and done. Pack it up and put it back in your garage for the next yard sale.
I had a lady that came through on Saturday that offered to make me a deal on all of the clothes I had left. When we packed up we had 13 boxes of clothes left and 2 boxes of linens, a box of dress up clothes. I called her up on Sunday afternoon after church and she took all of the clothes for $100. She owns a thrift store. I told her that I was having another sale after summer and asked if  I could call her after the sale and sell her the clothes that I will have left over, and she said yes! Yay!
After she left, I went through all of the things I had left and threw a bunch of stuff away that did not sell and put it by the road.
I purged my yard sale stuff and kept the nice stuff. I also marked down everything I had to half price because I don't want to carry it on to yard sale #3. The goal is to get rid of stuff so that there is more room to collect more stuff! I think I have caught the yard sale bug!
Remember to price and organize the stuff as soon as you get it, so that you wont be doing any last minute pricing and organizing. Mark the small stuff  cheap so it wont be around long and the bigger items at about 1/3 of the original cost. 
Shoes are a very hard  thing to sell at a yard sale. So what we did was put all of the kids shoes on the side with the fill a bag for $5 and then the adult shoes we put $1 on each pair. 
We also got alot of purses donated. We sold them for $3 each or 2 for $5. They sold like hot cakes. We had then hanging up on a clothes dryer so that they were easy to view.

Well..I hope one or 2 of those suggestions will have helped so that you can have a successful yard sale like ours and be one step closer to bringing home your little ones! I'm so excited for you!
Share with us your story and tips in the comments section or a link to your adoption journey.
Many Blessings to you!
 One last thing. Feed your help! Buy some pizza or something quick and easy so they don't get famished and make sure that you are drinking plenty of water throughout the day or you will end up with a headache by the end of the day. Not fun. 










2 comments:

  1. Wow! That's excellent advice. So glad you did so well. I've always thought I should have a yard sale but am never organized enough for one. ha! ;)

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  2. Hi Dianna,

    I would love to donate some money. I didn't see a link on this page; I only saw the thermometers. Can you send me a link or something?

    Thanks!
    Tim

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