Your Summer To-Do List, Cincinnati: Car Donation and Garage Sale
Tips on hosting your next successful garage sale
Hey there, spring cleaning champion. Don’t quit while you’re ahead. Get some bucks from all your hard work by hosting a garage sale.
Now’s your time. With sunnier Saturdays and Sundays come the savvy sale shoppers, rummaging for treasure. From selling your old love seat to making a car donation, it's time to clean house.
Pick your place
Before you start anything, decide the site of your sale. Most often, it’s your front yard or garage, allowing shoppers to stop by without entering your home. However, sometimes, entire neighborhoods will come together to host a block sale or parents will arrange for a trunk sale at their children’s school.
Dedicate a staging area
Once you have a location, devote an area to planning, pricing and arranging. If you’re going to have the sale in your garage, streamline the process by parking your car elsewhere during preparations so you won’t have to move things twice.
Avoid the whole shebang
Getting organized for a garage sale can mean more money and less stress. A key to reduce overwhelm when prepping for your sale is to look at your to-sell pile in parts rather than the whole.
In days leading up, tackle one category before moving on to the next. For example, on Monday, sort through for anything media related—DVDs, CDs, iPods—decide on a fair price and slap on the sticker. Continue categorizing until you’ve reached the bottom.
Aside from big ticket items, price most goods between $1 and $100 to improve ease of sale. Remember, these are things you don’t need or want anymore, so any price is a good price!
Be the store
During the summer, buyers can often drive a city and find more than a handful of sales in a few hours. Make yours stand out by making your front yard look like your very own store. What’s most aesthetically pleasing to you when entering a shop? Present your sale similarly.
While you’re setting up, keep like-items together so that guests can see a theme and where they’ll likely place the item in their home, whether it be in the kitchen, for a sport or on a hanger. Make pathways clear and display items thoughtfully to enhance accessibility.
Throughout the day of your sale, condense so the overall look remains organized and appealing.
Spread the word
You don’t have to nix the traditional newspaper ad or fliers around town. But consider other advertising channels, some of which are free:
- Craigslist - include photos
- Facebook, including your personal page and your neighborhood’s
- Twitter (live tweet your sales so potential customers get a sense of urgency)
- Instagram - share shots of your best items
- Garage sale websites
- Your city’s events webpage
- Email to your network
- Local blogs
When advertising your sale, draw people to action by highlighting a few unique items.
No bites on your used car? Make a Cincinnati car donation
We applaud your ambition to start summer fresh. If you weren’t so lucky at selling that unused car, old lawn mower or rusted golf cart at your sale last weekend, it wasn’t all for nothing. Unloading big ticket items on your own can be tricky because most sale shoppers won’t have $200 burning in their pockets.
But, actually, you are in luck. You might end up getting more for your motor as a tax-deductible donation to Volunteers of America Greater Ohio than you would selling it yourself. Donate any vehicle, from cars and motorcycles to tractors and ATVs, even if it’s not running.
We can arrange free same-day towing.