[hollytheteacher]

X posted in the dave ramsey thread, but then realised that it might be helpful to everyone (even those not specifically doing dr)

So I just wanted to share what DH and I have been doing to bring in a little bit more income.

We live two doors down from a thrift shop and whenever i am decluttering i always bring stuff down there. Well, I had a thought, why not have a half-a$$ed lawn sale, sell what i can and then just donate the rest.

So one saturday i just put everything on my lawn and within 2 hours i made 27 dollars!

So DH and I decided to try it again the following weekend. We put out the rest of the stuff that didn't sell and made 59 bucks!!

So now, what we do, is whenever we see free stuff on the side of the road or in the free section of this other little thrift-y kind of shop, we take it and put it out at our lawn sales.

WE don't advertise or anything, but we have a lot of foot traffic where we live.

Oh and we price stuff REALLY low so people get all excited and buy a lot. Like we found a free pack and play in perfect condtion and sold it for 3 bucks, the lady was so excited she bought like 15 dollars worth of toys and books (all for like 50 cents each).

Anyway, just wanted to throw that idea out there!

 

[CityChic]

What is your time commitment to collect, set up and tear down? (Just curious!) And where do you store stuff?

 

[kittynurse]

Not to rain on your parade (because it's awesome that you are decluttering *and* making money!) but a lot of places have restrictions on how many garage sales a year you can have. You might want to check out your town's bylaws regarding that so that you don't have the neighbours calling and complaining.

Martha

 

[ckberkey]

Quote:

Originally Posted by kittynurse Not to rain on your parade (because it's awesome that you are decluttering *and* making money!) but a lot of places have restrictions on how many garage sales a year you can have. You might want to check out your town's bylaws regarding that so that you don't have the neighbours calling and complaining. Martha

Good tip! I would not have known that.

 

[hollytheteacher]

It doesn't take a lot of time at all. We just grab things as we see them, like the other day on my way to work someone set out a free baby swing and bouncy chair...I loaded them into my car and continued on my way.

We have a largish entryway/dining room that we don't use as a dining room. We have a small table and chairs in our living room that we eat at, so we (for now) are storing all the stuff there.

It takes about 15-20 min to set up on our yard, but we just go about it and people start showing up, buying up stuff, and we add more.

For example today, we put up a sign out in front of our house saying "lawn sale today 11-3" and starting setting up at 10:30, we had like 8 people stop by before 11 and already sold 28 dollars worth of stuff!

Thanks for the tip about lawn sales, but i'm almost positive we have no laws about that here, plus all my neighbors get excited and come over to shop LOL ...also as i said we have two thrifts stores within 3 houses/apartments of ours so this street is used to seeing a bunch of stuff out in front. We are the only house on our street, the rest are apartments/thrift shops.

We put our stuff out today and made $40.60 in four hours (probably in 3 hours as the last hour no one really bought anything). Plus today, my mom came over to play with ds so DH and I took turns "manning" the lawn sale, while the other of us did house cleaning/house maintenance stuff.