It’s over. You did it. You put together a sale and managed to reduce the amount of clutter in your place. Maybe you made a few dollars along the way. And now, as the last exchanges occur and the final cars pull away, you can retreat to your home and relax.
Except you can’t. Not yet. The sale itself is over, but your work isn’t quite done. The steps you need to take after the sale is over are just as important as the ones you took to put it all together. And the better the post-sale activities go, the more you will be able to benefit from the impact your sale has made.
Here are 11 post-event things to do to make your sale even more successful.
Assess the remaining items
Unless your garage sale items were entirely rare, ridiculously affordable, and utterly irresistible, odds are that not every item was purchased. SHAME!
Actually, it’s not uncommon for some things to go unsold. It’s not you, honey. He’s just not that into (used) shoes. Rather than chuck every unsold item into an open space in the garage, for it to only become clutter once again, take a moment to categorize what remains. By sorting the sale’s leftovers and storing them by category, you’ll be better able to make decisions about what to do with your second-hand scraps.
Organize and clean up
Now it’s just you and your items that didn’t sell, alone together once again. Time to get judgemental. They failed you, didn’t they? It wasn’t enough that over time they became odd and unuseful. They also had to insist on taking up space that has only become more precious since you began what your friends tell you is an ill-advised collection of Bulgarian-made air fryers. But you’ll show them; once the market for those dangerously inscrutable appliances hits, you’ll have the money to show them all.
In the meantime, sort your leftover items into physical spaces devoted to their respective post-sale lives:
Whether your goal for a sale is to make some money, to clear some space, or to just have a good reason to meet new people, it’s a good idea to try to leave no trace:
Donation
Donating items is pretty great. It’s a quick way to free yourself of unwanted items, it makes those items available to people who could use them at a free or discounted rate, and if you document it properly, it’s a write-off for your annual taxes. If you choose to go this route with your unsold items:
Selling Online
You already know a lot of the places things get resold online: eBay, Facebook Marketplace, Craigslist, etc. Creating a listing on these platforms is relatively easy - the platform designers have gone to great lengths to make it so.
But an effective listing is often more simply posting a few haphazard pictures of your blender along with the description “Works.” When creating a listing, take a page from platform design and ask yourself a few questions about your potential customers: Who are they? What do they want?
These shouldn’t be difficult to answer because you’ve often been the very customer in question. When you hop onto Craigslist or Marketplace, do you do it with a particular item in mind? Or are you simply browsing, third glass of wine in hand, with the intent to spend money on something that catches your eye?
Apart from the obvious choice to post helpful pictures, let your listing writeup provide customers with what they want:
Determine whether you’ll offer shipping for items you’re selling. Some buyers have the money to purchase your items, but not the means to take it off your hands.
From where you choose to resell your items online, to how you do it, try to make every decision one that makes it easier for shoppers to become your customers.
Storing for Future Sales
Some of your items can actually go back into whatever form of storage you’re using. Despite what furniture liquidator commercials tell us, not everything must go. When it makes sense to do it, store some of your items for the next sale.
It may take a small investment, but use the appropriate packaging for items you care to try reselling again. This means protecting glass, wrapping furniture, and boxing loose items.
Whether you’re using a storage unit, garage space, or a corner of the living room, make sure the items are organized for safe storage. This means large, heavy items on the bottom and lighter things on top. For boxed items, clearly label the boxes so you can easily recall their contents.
Looking to optimize your storage space? Even relatively affordable plastic bins and shelves can greatly improve your storage scene. Better still, those bins and shelves are often listed for resale by people who have put them to good use.
Recycling and Disposal
One of the wonderful things about thrifting, yard sales, and similar reselling ventures is that they can help offset the impacts of a disposable culture where items are bought or used once, then discarded as waste with a prolonged management lifecycle.
But not every item can be sold or even donated. And you can’t just hang onto them forever. If throwing away an item is the only solution, take a moment to find out whether it can be recycled. If the item features the iconic recyclable symbol of three arrows arranged in a triangle, odds are it can be recycled.
Look closely and you may see a number in addition to the recyclable symbol. If you see a 1 or 2, it’s the recycling bin for you. If a 3 through 6 you see, consult your local recycling authority.