I have been mentioning that I was planning on trying to sell some of these items I bring home at a yard sale.  Previous experiences with yard sales have been that they are a huge pain, and I couldn’t be sure that I would sell any of the stuff, so I have been treating this as an experiment pending proof.  We had been debating on whether or not to have one at my parents house this weekend.  Our own house doesn’t have a huge amount of traffic.  It was semi-scheduled three weeks ago in that “okay, we’ll be in town then, let’s do it” sort of way, but as this week progressed, we sort of got intimidated at the thought of preparing for an actual sale, so we decided against it.  At noon on Friday, the plan was suddenly back on, so I spent an extremely busy afternoon packing up the contents of my little room stockpile and also packing for the weekend while making sure that the toddler did not tear the house down around our head. (Looking at the place upon our return tonight–not sure how successful I was at that one.)

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I priced most things at $1.50, or 3 for $4, and allowed mixing and matching.  It was so much fun!  People were buying things like crazy.  My concern had been that people would be leery about buying this stuff from a yard sale, but I think the fact that there was so much of it made it seem more normal.  My husband says that everyone knew that clearly I had held up a Walgreens. ;)  I had three large tables and one small table full of stuff.  By the end of the day, there was so little left that we dumped it into three boxes when it started to rain. (It ended up not raining more than a couple of drops but everything was put away by the time we knew that for sure–but it was three o’clock by then anyway so it was time.)

In the end–I sold $333 worth of stuff.  I had a little money in some of this stuff, between tax, gas and coupon costs, but most of it was profit. (Let’s not forget that quite a few items were profitable to begin with!)  I had a secret goal of $300 so I was watching the totals all day. We hit a slow spot around lunchtime, and I had barely hit $200, so I didn’t think we’d make it, but we did.  I was pleased with how much we brought in, and I can’t wait to do it again. I need to do more shopping before I can, though!  I also must say that my husband has a brand new enthusiasm for this hobby of mine. He’s always been supportive of it, but he is certainly excited about it in a new way now. :)

The best sellers were probably the shaving cream, the toothpaste, the Huggies diapers, and the body wash, lotion and shampoo.  I could have sold four times as much shaving cream as I did, which surprised me.  Proportionate to savings, the shampoo was a better deal, I thought.  Shaving cream isn’t that expensive, you know?  The razors were flying, too.  I sold a lot of toothpaste at $1, though I still have quite a few tubes left.  I wish I’d counted how many I had to begin with–at least fifty.  I brought eight packages of diapers and sold them all for $5 each. I even brought some in Evelyn’s size–I really don’t care much for Huggies anyway, and generally buy Walgreens brand for ridiculously little money when they’re on sale.  I didn’t bring much in the way of cleaning supplies because my aunt bought most everything a couple of months ago, but what I had sold pretty quickly.

The medicines did not sell as well as the other stuff, though I did sell quite a bit.  I think that people just weren’t interested in buying the stuff when they didn’t currently need it, you know?  It might do better in the fall, when cold/flu season hits.  I priced it the same as the rest, though, and that really made some of the savings pretty incredible compared to retail.  I had a stack of diabetes testing kits, of course, and sold two. That is two more than I expected to sell, though!  My dad and M talked me into pricing them at $5 each. I was going to try $2 and give them away if I had to.  I have way too many.  I’m glad I listened to them. I would have had to sell five at my price to make up the difference, and I’m pretty sure I wouldn’t have.

Anyway, it was a really fun day. The weather cooperated except when it threatened to rain at the very end, but even that wasn’t bad.  It got us up and everything put away super-fast!  The baby was having the time of her life, wandering around outside with her Granny.  It was just in general the most pleasant yard sale ever.  :)  We’re looking forward to trying it again, and in the meantime, I will be buying even more stuff than before with the intention of selling it.  In fact, I’ve already started!

(Big surprise, right?)