Oregon Living 2023 – Blog #24 – Prepping and Having Our Yard Sale!

 

Sunday, June 4^th.., 2023…… Today we start on the yard sale project. We have several shelves in the rv garage that we have completely filled with yard sale stuff!  Our job today was to get it all down and arranged in the yard. We will need more tables! Penny came over and helped. But all we managed to do today was get ½ of the boxes emptied and staged. The other half we will do tomorrow. But at least they are all out there! We came in and rested and watched tv for the afternoon, going out a few times to empty more boxes. I did have to cover up the material table with a tarp. No rains coming but the wind is blowing pretty hard this afternoon. Tv and spa and then bed.

Monday, June 5^th., 2023……  Happy Birthday Maryanne!  Round two of the staging. We were up and out for the dogs and then left for the gym and breakfast. Afterward, we went out and got everything out and either on a table, or on a tarp. Penny came by and started staging items. She is a veteran at this so we just let her go!!!  But we stopped short and came in for the day. I still need to finish up a couple more yard sale signs and wire them for the poles. I finished that and we were done for the day. Tomorrow we will finish pricing everything.

Tuesday, June 6^th., 2023……  Still working on arranging tables and other items. We got the stereo hooked up and I tested it for records too. It works well! I have decided to sell the Husqvarna tractor at this sale. I paid $650. for it over 6 years ago. It will have a $600.00 tag on it which is firm. Not a bad investment for that time period!  I think the plan going forward will be to also sell the John Deere as well and buy a new Cub Cadet. We’ll see. I needed to charge the battery on the Husqvarna and got that going. Later in the day, we took pics and Cat posted on several sites about the sale. Marketplace exploded and she got dozens of questions. Seems they blow up and search each pic and do a follow up question if they see something they want.  

Wednesday,  June 7^th., 2023……  Happy Birthday in Heaven Lydia!  We finished up everything for the yard sale and all we needed to do was to put the signs up. I left early and went to the local church board and the market’s board to post for the sale. There are folks who go to both of these places to list or look for items and sales so we needed to get the word out. Later in the day, Cathye drove and I got out at various locations to attach the signs to posts and trees.  When we got back, I started the Husqvarna and brought it out and washed it, priced it, and staged it and Cat took pics and added it to the media sites. Again – we got tons of inquiries.  I think we are ready for tomorrow!

Thursday, June 8^th., 2023…… Both Penny and Cherrelyn were here before we opened at 8:00am. They both brought stuff to sell and they did ok with that.  It was a terrific day!  I can just say this – we had a constant barrage of cars lined up on the street and a steady crowd. We didn’t have time to stop and take pics! But these were from the staging and only covered a few areas….

Most everyone was surprised at how reasonable the prices were. At the end of the day, we sold close to 3/4 of everything! Including the tractor which went in the first hour. Folks kept complimenting me on my signs. For those who don’t already know, I did this sign thing for many, many years for my SoCal square dance club’s yard sales.  I did find out that I probably should have listed times on those signs because even though we advertised start and end times (8:00am-3:00pm) on social media, folks driving by didn’t know when we were shutting down. We had folks coming by at 6:00pm wanting to buy. Since we didn’t have anything else planned, we stayed out there until after dinner and then I went out and put caution tape across the driveway. We were tired but it was a very profitable day!

Friday, June 9^th., 2023…… Day two of the sale. The weather yesterday started out nice with overcast and then we saw blue skies in the afternoon. Perfect day. Today was a little cooler and it stayed cloudy most of the day.  The sun didn’t come out until way later in the day. The crowds slowed down a lot too. It’s a small town and the true yard salers hit us yesterday! So, today, for the most part, it was pretty quiet. With the nicer items going yesterday, we knew it would be slower and it was. Tomorrow we mark everything half off to get rid of what we can. There is a boys and girls club that we may call and they will come out but they only will take items they want, not everything. There’s a guy that we’re trying to locate who will come and get everything left. Penny and Cherrelyn were here again. Love those gals!  They know what to do and work hard and that helps us out a lot. Cathye ordered wings delivered and we had a quick lunch. Like I said, it was a lot quieter today and at the end of the day, we know that tomorrow will be even slower. Cat and I will handle it by ourselves tomorrow. There are many folks struggling these days so we think those folks as well as the bargain hunters/resellers will show up for half price day!  

Saturday, June 10^th., 2023……  The day started slower than we expected. Our neighbors across the street came by and we talked about the street traffic. Rick said he counted at one time 30 cars on the street on Thursday.  Not as much today but, as the day went on, we started getting a lot of cars. As I said, we had signs up at the end of the street and I went out and added a ‘½ off today’ addition. And we told them as they came in that everything (except the radios and Cherrelyn’s bed and mattress topper) was half off. Plus, we took everything that we had marked at .25 and put it on the ‘free’ table. All of that meant that we moved a lot of stuff. Later in the day, we had a ‘load up a box for $3.00’ sale and that helped too. Both Penny and Cherrelyn came back in the afternoon.  We shut down around 4:00pm and Penny and I went out and brought in all of the signage. We had already put the radios on dollies and had them in the rv garage. We all worked to put the remaining stuff in boxes for donation and break down and store the tables.  I took this pic of the donations.

Not bad for all we started out with!  Oh, forgot – all of the stuff Penny and Cherrelyn brought over sold so they were happy about that!  So - we were done!  I took everyone out to Gametime for dinner and drinks. It was a long process and we are all through with yard sales for a while!  We got back home and the girls left and we enjoyed some down time. We have some work to do on Sunday to load up the donations but I will have to work on that later in the day because we are taking the truck in to Costco tomorrow morning for new tires. I also want to cut a few inches off the two wooden tables I had made. They are stored upright and are a little too long for the space I have them in.