10 Tips for Organizing a Neighborhood Garage Sale

The first step is to talk amongst your neighbors to see who would be interested in participating in the neighborhood garage sale. It is important that you get enough houses to participate in the sale so that your customers deem it worthy of checking out. If the weather is nice some people may even be walking from sale to sale which means they will be looking for multiple houses participating within a short distance.  

Once you figure out who will be participating from your neighborhood, discuss potential dates and decide on the best one. Make sure to check for any events happening in the area that might conflict with customers stopping by your sale. Also, if there are other nearby neighborhoods having garage sales, people might make a whole day of it and be more willing to stop by your location as well. 

The most important step to organizing a neighborhood garage sale is to advertise your sale. This can be done in a variety of ways including online websites (want ad digest, craigslist, etc.), newspapers, creating a Facebook event, sharing on other social media platforms, and of course by word-of-mouth. The great thing about getting a lot of people to participate in your neighborhood, is that you will have more people to help promote and share the event on social media.  

Create a flyer for your neighborhood garage sale with the important information including dates, times, and locations. You can post the flyers on street signs around the neighborhood and even ask local businesses to display them for customers. Make sure that the flyers grab their attention, and you distribute them with plenty of notice. 

Creating a map of the neighborhood and labeling which houses will be participating would be extremely helpful for customers. You can even highlight key categories of items the houses will be selling so customers can organize where they want to visit depending on what they are looking for. This map can be included in the garage sale flyer, or even be created digitally to share online.  

Every county has their own rules for hosting a garage sale, so it is important that you seek out the correct information for your neighborhood. If you live in Saratoga County, check out the county’s website for more information on permits and applications near you.  

Once the garage sale is underway, it’s important to let people know which houses are participating other than a neighborhood map if you chose to make one. Encourage the people participating to put out balloons, decorations, or a sign to grab customer’s attention to let them know that they have things to sell.  

The neighborhood garage sale doesn’t just have to be for adults, kids can have a great time too! You can encourage kids to help by selling some of their own things and letting them keep what they earn. You can even have them oversee the checkout process, working with cash and making change all day can really help with developing their math skills. You could always stick to traditions and encourage the younger kids in the neighborhood to team up and host a lemonade stand throughout the sale. Especially if it is a nice summer day, customer’s will be lining up for a refreshing drink in-between hopping from one sale to another at each of the houses. 

Once the garage sale has ended, get together with your neighbors to discuss what items didn’t end up selling and ask if they would be willing to donate them. Check with your local homeless shelters, churches, the city mission, or a second-hand store like Salvation Army or Goodwill to see what they are accepting. Arrange for every neighbor to drop off individually or organize one person to do one bigger drop off.