Have you ever hosted a garage sale? How about with kids?

If you ask most people, they’ll say that garage sales are a ton of work. I would whole-heartedly agree! About a month ago, some good friends of ours hosted a garage sale with us, at our home. My son and his friend were raising money for an upcoming fishing tournament, and we decided to skip the traditional fundraising route and throw a huge garage sale instead.

I hosted the sale at our house, and in the month prior, began texting family and friends, asking for donations. My son made a short video, explaining the cause for which he was fundraising (a big fishing tournament, that he will be competing in this July, with his friend). I sent this to everyone, and the response was enthusiastic and generous. Almost everyone I asked had things, lying around their house, that they wanted to donate! Donation collection began, and our garage became more and more full of items in the weeks leading up to the sale.

From beginning to end, it was a lot of work, but also an incredibly fruitful experience for us–not just in donations, but in lessons of hard work, perseverance, preparation, business etiquette, and neighborhood community!

During this experience, our kids learned and/or practiced the following skills:

• The importance of greeting customers with a smile
• Answering questions about their fishing club, expertise & upcoming trip
• Counting and making change
• Communicating clearly, both via signage and verbal communication
• Persevering through two 9-hour days of intense heat
• Offering to bag and/or carry heavy items to customer’s cars
• Arranging merchandise in an advantageous way
• Cleaning up at the end

How To Host A Garage Sale: Getting Started

Here are a few things we brainstormed as we planned out our garage sale:

• 1. WHAT: Decide whether you are doing a garage sale, a yard sale, a $1 sale, etc. Ours was labeled as Garage Sale but in reality was more like a Yard Sale, because everything was out in our driveway and yard. We also included a Lunch Combo, for which we charged $5! My friend took charge of this aspect. This involved brainstorming food items to sell, pricing everything out, purchasing items, prepping coolers, crocpots and cutlery items, and making sure everything was served properly, day-of. Here is our shopping list, and what we charged for food items:
  • Hot coffee + creamer (the first morning only-it was too hot!) FREE
  • Hot dogs (buns, condiments): $2 each
  • Bags of chips: $1 each
  • Chocolate chip cookies: $1 each
  • Drinks (choice between bottled water, sparkling juice, or several soda varieties): $2
  • Paper boats, napkins, cutlery, food gloves for serving
• We used our own coffee caraffe, crocpots to cook + warm the hot dogs, and coolers to store the drinks and cookies during the sale.
• We bought in bulk, and purchased the minimum amount of lunch-combo quantities of everything we could, for day 1. For our particular products, this was 18. We had more of some items (for example, the chips came in packs of 24), but we planned to sell 18 lunch combos the first day, and knew we could always run out and get more food midday, if things got crazy.
• 2. WHEN: We picked the dates for our sale. We chose a Friday & Saturday in June. The city where I live throws a citywide garage sale each summer, and we aligned ours with that. In hindsight, I wish we would have done that Thursday & Friday, instead! A friend mentioned Thursdays are the best days for garage-saling in our area, and I truly had no idea. Sure enough, by the time the weekend came around, I saw others with signs up for Thursday sales. Our family also noticed more traffic on Friday, than Saturday.
• 3. WHERE: An obvious one, but- if you are doing this sale with a friend or family member, think about whose house, garage, or yard may work better for the sale. In our case, I didn’t mind hosting, and I had more friends and family members who were willing to donate items for us, so we hosted. My husband prepped our garage, and we had donations piling up in the two weeks prior to the sale. We decided to set everything up in our driveway and yard, versus the garage itself (so I suppose it was more like a yard sale!) We have a nicely paved, flat driveway that is a good size, so this worked well.
• 4. WHY: In our case, we had a special cause to raise money for! Of course this isn’t always the case, but I think it made our sale special. We had our boys greet each guest, and explain why they were raising money. They answered a lot of questions about their fishing program, the types of lures they like to use, and their plans for the big trip next month. People were intrigued by their fishing program and generous with their tips and donations, since it was a fundraiser for kids.
• 5. HOW: The way we pulled this off successfully was due to a lot of planning and hard work! My friend and I are both planners, and like to think things through well before we act. We spent the month before the sale planning, pricing things, organizing materials, gathering tables to borrow, registering for the city-wide sale, and other logistics. I would highly recommend planning as much as you can, so that you feel organized and not rushed.

Selling Food at a Garage Sale: What We Learned

The Lunch Combo was 100% my friend’s idea! It was spectacular. We had our boys be in charge of the food station, and had them wear food gloves to make sure everything was sanitary and delicious. We coached them in how to interact with customers, explain product prices and options, communicate about condiment options, and being sure to thank them before they left.

It was a scorching hot weekend, so we ended up keeping the chocolate chip cookies in the cooler with the drinks. Several people wanted just a cookie, or just a drink, or just chips and a drink, so the boys practiced handling money and making change. We also made more profit off individual food items, since the lunch combo was such a good deal.

Many people purchased the Lunch Combo, which included a hot dog, chips, drink, and cookie for $5 (a steal, if you ask me!) Several people came as families, so they would purchase four or five combos at once! And, to my friend’s great amusement, one man came by who was part of a construction site, and bought five combos for him and his crew! (She had been hoping a construction crew somewhere would see our signs and come by. Her wish was granted!)

Marketing A Garage Sale: How To Get The Word Out

For our signage, I purchased this simple pack of Garage sale signs, some extra tape, and about 15 bright orange posterboards from the Dollar Tree. I used the generic garage sale signs all around the surrounding neighborhoods, and used the bright orange signs for “Lunch Combo” details. I had my son set them up the morning of the sale.

One disclaimer: if you are setting up any signs in peoples’ yards, be sure to get permission first! This was a lesson I learned the hard way. Most of our signs were on public corners, but a few were technically corners on private lots. The problem was, I was putting the signs up around 5:15am, so I didn’t think it was appropriate to ring the doorbell at that time. One neighbor was upset that we hadn’t asked first, and that was our mistake!

Post on Facebook Marketplace: a friend of mine who is an experienced garage sale host recommended I make up a little flyer on Canva and post about the sale on Facebook Marketplace. I did that, and also made a separate post for our lunch combo. I think it helped, because my listing got several hundred clicks over the course of the two days.

Text your friends! Another obvious one is just to let everyone know you’re having the sale! Even though I knew my friends wouldn’t necessarily need anything at our sale, I knew they would want to support the boys. We both invited friends to come by and grab lunch combos, and many did!

Place signs strategically: my friend was hoping we would be able to alert nearby construction crews who made need a cheap lunch meal, and we did! I also tried to set up our lunch combo signs in nearby neighborhoods with the most traffic, thinking about things like speed limits, slowdown speeds, and how many times people may need to see a sign in order to turn into a neighborhood they hadn’t planned to.

Manners & Business Etiquette

One great skill the boys worked on throughout the course of the garage sale was their manners and business etiquette. We coached them before, and during the garage sale to make sure they were:

• Making eye contact
• Smiling
• Educating customers on their cause
• Asking customers if they were looking for anything in particular
• Offering to carry heavy items to customers’ cars
• Proposing a cold drink, snack or lunch combo

As far as business etiquette, we talked about ways to behave maturely and professionally, especially while handling money. I thought they would be curious, maybe midday or just randomly during the sale, about how much money they had raised so far. This is a completely normal thing to wonder! However, we talked with them in advance about not taking the money out, or counting it, or speaking loudly about amounts or spending. A certain level of decorum was expected, and this was a good opportunity for them to practice that professionalism.

We also recognized that it was hot and humid outside, and that we were having a 10 and 11 year old boy work an 8-hour day, two days in a row. They were understandably tired at certain points. We took plenty of snack breaks, they played chess or catch in the lulls without customers, and they made it through. But, it was a challenge for them! We made sure that despite their fatigue, if a customer was approaching, they were standing up and greeting them no matter what.

Raising Money For A Cause: What We Noticed

One thing I noticed was that no one bartered for any items! Even though it was a fundraiser, we did have a large quantity of things to sell, and we honestly just wanted to be able to sell most of it, even at lesser prices. However, I think the customers were respectful of the cause. Since it was clearly a kids’ fundraiser, no one tried to barter lower prices. Thankfully, we had plans for the leftover items–we donated them to a friend for her church’s Free Sale, happening the following weekend.

Logistical Tips For Hosting A Garage Sale

Lastly, here are a few additional tips that worked well for us!

• Accept both cash and Venmo: less and less people carry cash these days, myself included! While I’m sure people expect to use cash at a garage sale, having Venmo as an option is much appreciated. About half of our customers paid via Venmo!
• I wasn’t sure how much cash to get from the bank, so I just Googled it! I ended up getting $50 in ones, $50 in fives, $50 in tens, and a few $20 bills. I also got two rolls of quarters. For a two-day sale, this was more than enough. I also had my husband ready for an emergency ATM-run, if needed!
• I wore a fanny pack on my person, instead of using a cash box. The boys had a separate cash box for their food items, but honestly, most people just ended up paying me once (for their purchases and food together). This was fine! I read online that sometimes a fanny pack or apron is a bit more secure.
• Save up your plastic bags in the weeks prior, so that you can offer them to customers. Sometimes if people bought a lot of small items, they really appreciated them being bagged up.
• If you have younger kiddos who are young enough to not be able to help with the sale, consider arranging a friend playdate or childcare for them beforehand. My youngest two (toddler and preschooler) went with Grandma, which was an enormous help.
• Lastly: be sure to have a hearty meal ready inside for your kids, if they are helping you with the sale! We also had a friend stop by with some special snacks to munch on, knowing that we all would be pretty hungry in the heat of the day.

I hope these tips are helpful!

With love,

Cait