How to have a garage sale?

I can hardly move in our house due to all the over collected toys and clutter.
I am organising to have a garage sale on the weekend and would love any pointers on how to have a good one.
Is there anything special you need to do to have one?

Also where are you aloud to put up signs for it and are shopping centres ok?
I just don't want to get in trouble for advertising in the wrong place

I am sure that people will come in with more tips. I have never actually had a garage sale but a friend said that she should have gotten more change (money) before starting as people tended to turn up to hers with big notes.

The main thing is to get an ad in the paper on the day of the sale, I think Saturdays seem to be a more popular day for it. Give the street name but *not* the house number, or people will be knocking on your door before the advertised time. Don't put your signs out until you're ready to start trading, for the same reason.

Price things looooow. The point of the exercise is to get rid of stuff, not to make bags of money. Have lots and lots of change, coins and small notes. Keep them in a bum bag on you, not in a cash box. Make sure your house is locked ;). If it's a warm day, think about having an esky of canned drinks there to sell too. Label everything (because some people won't ask), but be prepared to knock your prices down if it means you'll sell more. At the end, if you haven't sold everything, pack it up straight away to take to charity (or phone them to collect if you have large furniture items). Obviously they only take clean good condition things, so if anything is rubbish, get rid of it first.

This is a really good time of year to have a garage sale, I have noticed lots of signs etc out the last couple of weekends so you should get some good traffic through. Good luck

Great tips Marydean!

The other thing we did, if you are selling anything electronic is to make sure you have batteries or power available so they can see that it works :)

Advertise in your local paper! Put up signs around the streets. We also advertised on Gumtree with photos. Some of our stuff was sold before the garage sale this way!

Definitely make sure you have change!

Also a comfy chair to sit in and maybe a magazine or something to read while you're waiting for people. They tend to come in spurts.

Price things down to about 1/4 of what they're worth new then be prepared to bargain.

Make sure you have extra plastic bags on hand if people want to buy a few items at once.

I found that clothes didn't sell at all unless they were designer labels or had the tags still on them. But handbags sold like hotcakes!

Think that's all I can remember for now! We had a combined one with friends a couple of weeks ago. It went ok but not as well as I thought. Anything left we took to the Salvos and any toys/kids books that were left I'm going to have a stall at the Baby and Kids markets.

Good Luck!

Thanks for the great advice everyone!

The garage sale is tomorrow and unfortunately I didn't make it into the local paper but we did manage to advertise online and put signs up all around the place.

That is a great idea sharon1977 to have a stall at the baby and kids markets. I have about 3 large tubs of baby clothes to sell and so much other baby stuff.
I am also going to give most of the stuff we don't sell to Vinnies but I was also thinking that I would like to donate it somewhere that gives things to families in need, so they don't even have to pay for it.

Thanks again for the great advice. I didn't really know anything about garage sales.
Wish me luck for tomorrow!
Dee