Comments on: Garage Sale Time!

By: Suzanne Saxe-Roux

Suzanne Saxe-Roux — Sun, 31 May 2009 21:41:25 +0000

Over the past few years we have been on a continuous journey of decluttering. I tall started when we moved to France for a few years and had no closets (see my article on closet clutter http://www.healthyjoyfulliving.com/the-answer-to-closet-clutter/ ). After moving a household into two storage units we realized how little we needed and how little we really liked! Salvation Army to the rescue. I say donate, donate, donate. The library and school received dozens of books, Goodwill and those in need received tons of clothes (and still do every month). I put a bag in my daughter’s closet and anything she doesn’t wear for 6 months, is too small, or worn out goes in the bag and is given away.

Garage sales are wonderful and in France I loved the vide greniers the communities held together, but sometimes I find donating is a whole lot easier as you can do it a little at a time which keeps everything less cluttered.

By: Donna

Donna — Tue, 21 Apr 2009 02:06:07 +0000

We just held a garage sale with friends this past Saturday. We’re in Hawaii so it was a nice, sunny day – Good thing my friend set up a canopy for us, we needed it. Our daughters set up a lemonade/snack stand. It was a lot of fun. Made some $, got to declutter. We lucked out that there were other garage sales in the neighborhood so we had a lot of traffic. But for big-ticket items, I prefer selling on craigslist or ebay.
When planning a garage sale, leave yourself plenty of prep time (at least a week or more) to go through your things and organize them in one place. It was fun to get together with friends to sell – lots of people got some great deals that day!

By: Clean Simple

Clean Simple — Sun, 19 Apr 2009 22:56:29 +0000

I hate seeing people look through my stuff so I don’t do garage sales. I’d rather donate items I no longer want/use and take the tax write-off. It’s not cash in hand, but it’s easier on my psyche.

good luck with your sale!

By: Tracy

Tracy — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 16:34:04 +0000

Fantastic idea! I love going to ‘em; they’ve become, along with Cheapcycle, eBay and thrift stores, my alternative to retail. I’m having a garage sale with a friend in May, which in Michigan can be risky; I love your term, Junuary. We, too, often go through all four seasons in one day.

By: Sheila Lina

Sheila Lina — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 14:17:59 +0000

I’ve been a huge fan of Karen Kingston’s book and I was pleased to see you mention it. I have tried the colon cleanse that she recommends and it’s not as yucky as one might think.

your colon does store a lot of your undigested food that comes from eating processed sugar, meat and other animal products. you never realize how that weighs you down until you finally get rid of it.

when i did the cleanse, i followed the instructions faithfully and ate a vegan diet, as natural and raw as possible. the cleanse consists of taking four kinds of herbal supplements that are meant to clean out your blood stream, liver and gall bladder, lower bowel and kidneys.

there was a lot of stuff that came out of me that i never realized i had. i lost 12 pounds total when i finished the cleansing period. my skin cleared up and i felt incredible light and energized. i also noticed that i got sick less.

although i switched back to eating animal products, i decided to do the cleanse annually after that.

i saw how much the difference was between eating meat and other animal products and being vegan that i permanently switched to a vegan diet.

there are other ways to clean out your colon that i investigated and I think that the herbs kit that Karen recommends is actually the gentlest and easiest to implement among them. what i like about it is that you still get to eat normally (although vegan) unlike other cleanses where you fast on juices or other methods that are quite extreme.

the best thing about a colon cleanse is that it is preventive medicine that helps you avoid a lot of other costly procedures later on.

By: BohoBelle

BohoBelle — Thu, 16 Apr 2009 04:31:20 +0000

Try and entice your neighbours to garage sale on the same day; you attract more people as the word of mouth circle is bigger and you can share the costs of newspaper adverts/street signs etc.

I’m moving house today and I’ve already got one box of things for ebay, another box is going to goodwill.

By: Angela

Angela — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 21:40:16 +0000

We don’t really have a good neighborhood for a garage sale, and our front yard is covered by two trees and a lot of ground cover and clover. So I’m going to try craigslist this year.

We used to have garage sales with some friends of ours. They would sell everything for 25 cents, no matter what it was. A lot of people got some great deals!

By: thenonconsumeradvocate

thenonconsumeradvocate — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:48:34 +0000

Jen,

I do shop at garage sales, but I actually try to avoid them a bit as I have everything I need and then some.

I used to go to garage sales with family members as a fun day-long activity. (I have a hard time resisting all the fabulous cheap goodies.)

Katy Wolk-Stanley
The Non-Consumer Advocate

By: Jen

Jen — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:31:45 +0000

Katy, do you shop at garage sales too?

By: Jen

Jen — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 17:30:41 +0000

We were able to marry two good projects: decluttering (having a garage sale) and fundraising for a project to create a school library in Botswana. People were generous when we told them what our sale was for. We surpassed our goal!