Spring is coming and for some spring means flowers and sunshine. But for others – spring means yard sale season!
A great idea for yard sales is to consider holding a multi family yard sale with your neighbors. A multi family yard sale is beneficial because people will come to see the wide variety of items at the different sales. The idea of being able to go to three or even four yard sales just by visiting one address is very appealing to lots of “yard salers”.
Holding a multi family yard sale with your neighbors is fairly simple, it does take a little planning. Probably the easiest way to do this is if one of you has already got your heart set on holding a yard sale and gets other neighbors interested. Often if one neighbor is interested in holding a yard sale, and they let the other neighbors know with enough time to plan their own yard sale – they are more than willing to join in the fun. So if you are thinking about holding a yard sale this spring or even in the summer – consider letting your neighbors know about three weeks ahead of time to see if they would like to do a yard sale at the same time. Also be open to the possibility that they could say “that weekend isn’t good for me, could we do it the next weekend?”. Your ability to be flexible and do it next weekend could make all the difference.
One of the best things about holding a multi family yard sale is you can advertise your yard sale together in the newspaper and you can make flyers to advertise it. Be sure to mention items you think will be popular – such as baby clothes or children’s toys or computer games. Mention the time the sale starts and the time the sale ends, and what days the sale is held on. Be sure to pay attention to the rules in your community about posting yard sale signs as some communities do not allow you to post signs for them.
It is much easier for everyone to keep their own cash box and their own money systems. Some people like to pool all of their money but then you have to straighten it all out at the end. This can be very hard, especially if one family has lots of large items that cost more money and other families have smaller priced items. So allow everyone to be responsible for their own finances at the yard sale. Encourage everyone to get change ahead of time, and be generous in sharing change, that is one of the benefits to everyone working on yard sales at the same time – you can all help each other out.
If you have young children a fun thing for them to do the day of the sale is to sell lemonade and cookies. You can arrange this at one of the houses and let all the kids get involved in this. This gives the kids something to do while the sale is going on. Older children would be helpful selling toys or other items or helping shoppers get items into their cars.
Having a multi family yard sale can sometimes be so much fun with your neighbors that you forget that you are selling items. Everyone has fun visiting with their neighbors on their lawns and you wind up purchasing items from each other very often. This is a wonderful thing to help bring your neighbors together in the spring for something fun to do!
