I enjoy going to garage sales on Sat­ur­day morn­ings. I haven’t done so in a long while but I’m in search for a cool table and I think I will begin my search for it at garage sales.

Whether you call it a garage, tag, or yard sale they are becom­ing increas­ingly more pop­u­lar in this econ­omy. They are a great way to earn a bit of money, as well as find things that you need for your fam­ily at an afford­able price. Shop­ping at yard sales is also a “green” thing to do because things are being re-used and not just thrown away.

Hes­i­tant about hav­ing a garage sale? Don’t be. It is a great way to get orga­nized and earn some extra money in the process.

Here is what I do to pre­pare for a garage sale.

1. Go through your home and search for items that would be good garage sale items, such as clothes that you haven’t worn in over a year. Toys that are no longer played with. Nick nacks that are just tak­ing up space (and caus­ing more dust­ing for you!), tools, fur­ni­ture, etc.

2. Fig­ure out how much you want to charge for the items. Tag them with price tags if you desire.

3. Decide when you want to hold your garage sale and place an ad in your local news­pa­per or using garage sale tracker (see below for my review on this web site).

4. Make signs and place them on streets that lead up to your home. Check with your community’s laws. In some towns you can’t post signs with out a permit.

5. The night before the sale make sure that you have about thirty dol­lars in one dol­lar bills to make change.

6. The morn­ing of your sale set out your items in a neat and orga­nized fash­ion. Use tables or blan­kets. An orga­nized garage sale does bet­ter and invites peo­ple in!

I highly rec­om­mend any items that aren’t sold be donated to a charity.

I’m happy to tell you about this new site I found called Garage Sales Tracker. It is a clas­si­fied web­site where you can list or search for garage sales.

Post­ing your garage sale is easy to do. Their for­mat is very user friendly and for a lim­ited time you can post a list­ing free of charge.

My favorite fea­ture when search­ing for garage sales was the abil­ity to search using my zip code and choose the num­ber of miles from that zip code I’d be will­ing to travel. You can also get dri­ving direc­tions, search for spe­cific items (like that table I’m look­ing for), as well as con­tact the seller.

If you are plan­ning a garage sale or would like to search for one do your­self a favor and check out this website

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