Junk-O-Rama
Jennifer and Kelly are trying to raise money for their honeymoon. What better way to raise money than a yard sale? You go through your house, pull out unwanted items, spend a week pricing them, put them out in your yard, and attempt to make your “trash” another person’s “treasure.” Sounds easy enough, right? Jennifer and I worked for an entire week going through every nook and cranny of the house looking for “treasures.” What we found, combined with items from Kelly’s house and Kelly’s mother’s house, gave us plenty of yard sale items. Maybe our items were not “prime” sale items (prime being anything baby oriented), but they were nice.
Last Saturday morning we got up at 4:00 a.m. and carefully arranged all our marketable merchandise. Kelly and Jennifer went around the neighborhood and put up the obligatory signs. Then our sale opened — with little fanfare and no customers. And it went downhill from there! I’ve had yard sales before, but that was the worst one I’ve ever had. Jennifer and I talked it over and decided that our lack of customers must have been a combination of location and the holiday weekend. During the previous week while we pulled out and priced items, we repeated over and over that after the yard sale everything left was going to charity. That quickly changed. Realizing our lack of sales and knowing that we had good items to sale, we decided to try one more time.
Kay was nice enough to offer up her house for our next yard sale attempt. She lives in the city at what we thought was a prime location. Once again, one week after our sucky yard sale, we got up at 4 am and put out our merchandise. This time, we said, everything left really was going to charity. Our sale opened at 7 a.m., and at 6:30 a.m., customers started coming in. We had a tremendous start and it went uphill from there. During the entire day, from 6:30 to noon, we had a steady stream of customers. There were never fewer than 5 customers at a time from 6:30 to 11:30. Things slowed down a bit at 11:30 and we closed things down at noon.
We did end up giving away a lot of stuff in the end because we had some customers who came after the sale had closed and we offered them anything they wanted for free. All of our leftovers, save 3 boxes, were given away and we only had to carry off the 3 remaining boxes. All in all, it was a wonderful day!
Our first yard sale netted 125.00. Today’s gross take was right at 400.00. Kenny and Kendrick had some items in the sale, around 65.00. Jennifer and Kelly’s take was right at 340.00. Was it worth all the work? Absolutely! Am I having another yard sale anytime soon? NEVER!


