Yard Sale or Bust

I had my very first yard sale this last weekend. Suffice to say, it was a bust. So I’m making up a list of How to Have a Yard Sale:

1. Advertise! Toot your horn! Make sure the whole area knows that YOU are having absolutely a must see yard sale right in your own neighborhood. And put your ad in TWO days before, not one. Sign up on Craig’s List – and update your ad every morning under a different email account so it’s always towards the top of the list.

2. Signs. Signs are a must. About twenty signs on every intersection you can think of.

3. BIG PRINT. The sign must be readable from a car a block away as it is driving towards the sign at 30 miles per hour; if your sign is too small or too lightly written, and your drive by car has to slow down to read it, or even stop to read it, other cars get antsy and honk at you until you just say hell with it and drive on to the next sign that MAYBE you can read this time.

4. Print your address – don’t just say “yard sale that-away” with an arrow. Quite often the wind blows the sign and it ends up pointing a totally different direction, like down.

5. Anchor your sign. I didn’t have near enough signs and one of them kept falling over repeatedly until I braced it against a light pole. I worried about my sign incessantly until I thought I’d have to put a “stupid” sign on my forehead.

6. Balloons. Mark your territory and show the whole street that you are having a party!

7. Tell all your friends to stop by. Give them a schedule and have them just park their car at pre-appointed times. They don’t even have to get out. For some reason, a parked car at a yard sale begets other cars. Whenever one stopped, several stopped.

8. Have a tarp for every table and then you just cover them at night and hope nobody helps themselves to freebies in the middle of the night.

9. Don’t have a yard sale when something big might be going on like graduations from all the high schools in your area but they are celebrating downtown and aren’t even going to drive by any time soon to just happen upon your poorly advertised yard sale.

10. It is so true that what is one person’s junk is another person’s treasure. You think that little sole Tupperware lid all by itself is ready for the garbage and some old lady pounces on it because she has been missing hers since the last church picnic.

I’m going to read this list and check it twice and try this whole thing again in a month. O my God what a lot of work.

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