Living better, spending less.
I had too much fun last week, with my husband on vacation, and not enough time left for blogging! It was great, but it’s also nice to get back to my quiet little daily routine, too.
We left here on Thursday to go spend the weekend with my parents. We didn’t really do much of a holiday celebration, though–we had another stockpile yard sale! It was a huge sale, with my stuff plus my parents, aunt and cousin. I wish we had taken a picture from the road. It looked like a small flea market with just our stuff! Friday was our best day, with $573 in sales. We did well the next day, too, with $267. I was pretty cleaned out from Friday so I was fairly happy with that, even though I couldn’t quite make my fantasy weekend goal of $1,000, but I did end up with $840 in total. That is not bad for two days! It was really pleasant, too. It is usually unbearably hot at the beginning of July here, but the weather was blessedly cool. So, I spent an hour or two in the mornings getting set up and the rest of the day sitting on the porch in the shade collecting cash. Completely worth the effort! Everyone did pretty well, actually. Combined, we brought in $1,543!
I raised my prices a little from last time. I went to $2 for body wash and my fancy shampoos, and shaving cream–all of which I sold at $1.50 last time. I don’t particularly feel like the shaving cream was worth raising my prices, but it flew off the table last time so I figured I might as well. I think I had just one left at $2 so it worked out. I kept a lot of stuff at $1.50 or 3 for $4, including the rest of the shampoo and hair care products, Glade Plug-Ins, Oust, and the medicines on Friday. I lowered the remaining meds to $1 on Saturday because I was just ready to get rid of the randomness of all of it. I sold every bit of Dawn I brought at $1 within an hour of opening on Friday. It goes on sale frequently for $0.99 at the drugstores, but I guess people either didn’t know that, or they just needed it and decided to buy it while they were there. One women bought eight bottles and was thrilled with the opportunity. I will definitely be buying more of that. Even if I just have the crappy $0.25 coupons, that’s $.25 profit, after all. The Schick and Fusion fancy razors were $4 each. I sold laundry detergent and fabric softener for $2.50 each, and Pampers diapers for $6 (and a couple of stray Kroger brand packages for $4.) I could have sold at least four times as many diapers as I did, easily. I was surprised at how well the food went. I didn’t really have much last time to compare it to, but I sold nearly thirty boxes of Fruit Roll-Ups at $1.50 each.
I had a sizable amount of stuff left from the last sale, and I took up two more car loads of stuff for this sale, plus one car load of household stuff. That was just stuff left over from a yard sale we has last year. We sold a little from it, and put most of it in a quarter box, just hoping to get rid of it. My mom just shook her head at me because I was telling about a couple of people who kept picking things up from the quarter box and asking me how much it was, so I’d tell them fifty cents. It was clearly labeled so I figured that it was a surcharge on bothering me with questions… haha. :) So, while I did have some sales from the random household table, it wasn’t much. Maybe thirty to fifty dollars, at most. I wouldn’t have guessed that much but there was one $10 item and some $.50 books. I am hoping to do at least one more before the season ends, and I am going to try to go through some baby clothes and toys for that one. I am feeling less sentimental about some of Evie’s stuff at this stage. I’m going to keep the best stuff for a potential second child, but the random items need to go. When we packed up yesterday afternoon (at the first sprinkling of rain!), it pretty much fit in about three or four boxes. There’s still a bunch of stuff left, but it will take some serious restocking before I’ll be able to have another one.
One other yard sale note. I was straightening up my tables on Saturday when I met another couponer! It turned out to be Old Lady with Coupons. So we got to talk coupons for a few minutes. It was so much fun! She came back later with a bag full of coupons for me. I gave her a curling iron from last month’s Walgreens sale to thank her. We actually were heading to Kroger that night anyway, so I looked through the bag before we left, and my parents ended up using about ten of them, for a savings of $7.40. Fun! So, thanks again, Lois! (My husband got to talk to a mandolin player earlier in the day about the mandolin he was playing–one of the ones he’s made, so we both got to indulge in a little “shop talk” during the sale, too. Nice!)
Now, if you need me, I will be at the drugstore, buying more stuff. I don’t have long until the season is over!
When I became a stay-at-home-mom, I promised I could save our family money by shopping sales and maybe even using a few coupons. I had no idea what I was getting into. These days, I am on a first-name basis with the cashiers at the local drugstores, I haven't paid for toothpaste or shampoo in over a year and I spend my free time here, helping others do the same. So please, make yourself at home while you learn how to save, and when to spend!
Jasmine
July 6th, 2009 at 9:30 pm
Do you literally do these yard sales in your yard? Or another venue.
You are the first couponer I have come across who does this. I think it is genius!
Kisha
July 6th, 2009 at 9:57 pm
I don’t do them at my house because I live off the main road, and the only yard sale we’ve ever had here (before stockpiling) was somewhat sparsely attended. I do them at my parents house, in their driveway, because they have better traffic to the sales they have. It is also a huge help that there’s someone to entertain my baby!
I am really loving these yard sales! I didn’t start out doing this. I was giving things away at first, but then I was inspired by a thread at slickdeals. It’s a lot of fun because I know that I’m bringing money in and I can therefore justify bringing home all this random coupon stuff that I know we won’t be able to use up. Also, even though I’m making money on this stuff, I really do have really good prices on most everything, compared to buying it in the stores, so it makes other people happy too.