I have hinted  for several weeks that we were preparing for a yard sale. I am excited and eager to announce that the physical yard sale actually took place this past Saturday.  I actually began planning for this the first weekend of March. I am not at all  new to yard sales. In fact, I remember travelling with my mother to a flea market as a child in order to bring in some extra money. Since becoming an adult, I usually participate in a yard sale either once a year or once every other year. For the past several years, I have been going to a small bank and setting up with our cheer gym.  The standard that makes a yard sale successful has not changed over the year either. If I am able to bring home a profit of $100 then that is a very successful yard sale.

One new thing that I have never tried before was “online” yard sale. Basically this is a free facebook group., where you post a picture and description of the item, along with price and general area for meeting.   I decided to only place 1-2 items for sale at a time.   I also only arranged pick up and meeting in private messages and did not consider an item sold until the meeting was arranged.  I was nervous at first due to the publicity of recent bad horrible stories from meeting arranged on craigslist and also some of the stories that I had heard about people just not showing up. I am excited to say that my experiences with this have been overall positive. I had one person come to  what I thought was purchase an item but they looked at the item and decided they did not want it. I replaced this item for sale and in less than 2 hours had another person arrive and purchase the item.  I also had one experience where I arranged to meet someone and they did not show up.  Otherwise everyone showed up with cash in hand and  it was the easiest way to sell items that I would consider big and I did not attempt to sell anything under $10 as I didn’t consider it worth the gas.  Matt ended up doing some of the meeting during the day but even he will agree how easy and quick most were. I made around $400 just on the online part.

After the huge success via online selling, I decide to go all out with the advertising and not only pay for advertising in our local paper which cost $38 for 3 days, but also placed an ad on craigslist and on the site I use on Facebook. We also placed several signs on Friday night as well. I am so excited to announce that on Saturday we had a profit of $350 after covering the cost of advertising and two meals for us!

OVERALL YARD SALE PROFIT $750…………………..my most successful/profitable Yard Sale EVER!!!

So how are we spending this money.  1) Purchased a new stroller to use at Disney.  2)Purchased several gift items for the kids including Autograph books and a dress for Kendall to wear.    3) Purchased matching shirts from the Disney store to wear  4) Applied $400 toward our trip cost!