5 Tips to Help You Clean and Prep Your Home for a Yard Sale

You might not think that much work goes into planning a yard sale, but if this is your position you’ve clearly never arranged one before. In addition to placing ads and hanging signs, you need to go through your home to find items you want to sell, clean any areas that people will walk through, and take the time to stage the sale in such a way that you’ll have the best chance for success when it comes to clearing out unwanted goods (and making a profit in the process). So here are just a few tips to help you clean and prep your home for a yard sale.

1. Clean sweep. You’ve no doubt seen the TV show of the same name where people get help decluttering their homes. If not, the concept is simple. The host, the family, and a group of professional cleaners remove every item from a room in the home and put it all on the lawn. Items are then sorted and placed in one of three areas of the yard: keep, toss, or donate. All the “keep” items come back in after the room has undergone a deep cleaning, after which they are organized for better storage. The “toss” items go in the trash, and as you may have guessed, the “donate” items in this scenario can go to your yard sale (or the Goodwill if they don’t sell).
2. Create a schedule. Going through your entire house, clearing out items to sell, and cleaning in their wake, can be an overwhelming chore. But it gets a lot easier when you break it down into manageable chunks. So start your prep a few weeks before you intend to have your yard sale. Then schedule one room each weekend until you’ve gone through the entire house. This way you aren’t facing down the barrel of 48 straight hours of cleaning and prep. Instead you can devote just a few hours each Saturday morning to a room and have the rest of the weekend free.
3. Pre-price. The major portion of prepping for a garage sale is pricing everything you want to get rid of. And while you’ll certainly want to affix specific price stickers to certain items of value, most of your junk can go into broad cost categories of the $1, $5, or $20 variety, just for example. So instead of taking the time to label every last stick of furniture and stitch of clothing, simply set up racks or tables of items that are all the same price the night before the sale.
4. Plot a diagram. Rather than hauling everything out of the garage the morning of the sale and trying to figure out where to put it, take the time beforehand to create a diagram of your selling area (the yard or driveway, for example), including any tables or clothing racks you might have on hand. This will help you to create a configuration that works best (allowing you clear sight lines to prevent theft) and you’ll know exactly where everything is going the day of the sale.
5. Clear hazards. Nobody starts their yard sale search thinking that the day could end in a trip to the emergency room, but if you leave hazards in your yard, driveway, garage, or any other area that buyers will enter, that’s exactly what might happen to visitors to your home. And you could wind up with an injured customer and a lawsuit on your hands. So turn off the sprinklers the night before to make sure the grass and the sidewalk aren’t wet, trim the brambles that line your drive, and remove every last drop of fuel from the chainsaw you’re selling. A clean and safe environment is the best way to ensure a fruitful experience for all.

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