Tips on How To Yardsale

Someone asked me recently to share my tips on how I yardsale.  How I do what I do and find all those great bargains out there?   Well, I thought I had shared a whole post on this, but apparently I have not done that in the past, or my search didn’t bring it up for me, so it is high time I shared all my secrets of yardsaling.

Really, these are not earth-shattering at all, but some basics of what I’ve learned in the last 15-20 years of thrifting.

• First, I always check out the weekend paper wherever I might be living. Atlanta is great for yardsales and so was Birmingham.  I always check out the Classified ads under Garage/Yardsales to find out where they are going to be.  Neighborhood sales are my very fave, since you can hit so many houses in one outing, so during Spring and Fall, I definitely look for those ads in the paper.  Some sales start on Friday a.m. and some start on Saturday, so take note of that.  Craigslist also has listings for yardsales, so don’t forget to scour that site too.

• Scout out your route and plan to leave early! That’s one of the biggest things I tell people.  You have to get out of bed early on a Saturday morning to find the best deals and the choicest pieces.  The old saying “the early bird gets the worm” didn’t come into vernacular without good reason! It’s totally true in yardsale world.  I try to arrive at least 15 to 30 minutes before the sale is scheduled to start.  Early is good, too early is not.  I don’t want to be that person sitting on the curb outside someone’s house before dawn.  That is TOO early! 😉

• I’ve been asked before if it is necessary to always look for ritzy neighborhoods and whether they should steer clear of mediocre ones? Nope, not really.  I’ve had good luck at all price points of neighborhoods, from upscale to regular old middle-class.   It just depends on who lives there.  You can find some great vintage things at the sales of older folks.  They tend to hang on to some good stuff and when they get ready to sell, it’s a treasure trove.

• Take plenty of cash! I’ve been known to forget to grab cash on a Friday night and get up bright and early Saturday with an empty wallet.  In that case, I have stopped into a drugstore or grocery store, bought a pack of gum and got cash back just to have some spending money for the yardsales.  That’s if the ATM is too far away. 🙂

• Have a mental list (or a real one if you’re really organized) of things you are looking for. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve found just what I was looking for at a yardsale just by being patient and waiting it out.  Instead of rushing to the store, wait until you hit a few sales and just see if that item turns up.  It usually does for me.  If you have a certain piece of furniture in mind for a certain space, take a tape measure with you just to be sure it will fit.  Keep dimensions handy of those spaces you are looking to fill and you’ll know it when you find it.

• As you arrive at a sale, train yourself to do a quick look around to see what might catch your eye first. You can always do the slow peruse later, but something might grab your attention right off the bat and you don’t want to lose out.   If you see something you might want to buy, pick it up in your hot little hands and hold onto it.  If you don’t, someone will surely come up right behind you and grab that precious thing you just had your eye on.  That’s happened to me a few times, but I learned quickly to hold on tight.

• Don’t be afraid to bargain with the sellers, but be polite and don’t offend them by asking for a dirt cheap price in the first hour. If you go to yardsales often enough, you’ll know what is a good price and what isn’t.  If a sale is too high on everything, I’ll just look around and leave.  I figure they do not want to sell their stuff that bad.  But, most folks want to get rid of their things and will definitely deal with you, so ask politely if that is the best price or offer a price that is slightly lower than asking price and see what happens.  Most of the time you’ll get a hearty YES!

• Don’t be afraid to dig through boxes and bins to see what’s hiding out. Some of the best finds can be hidden from sight and unless you dig, you might completely overlook a treasure.

• Turn items over to see the brand name. Pull out drawers or look on the back of furniture to see if it’s marked anywhere. This can often tell you if something might be worth more or less.  Look for furniture with dovetail drawers, often a sign of a quality piece.  Most older furniture made in the 40’s and 50’s is MUCH better made than anything made today, even if back then it was just a mediocre piece.   If you see Made in China, it’s newer and not really a treasure. I love to check out where things are made.  Made in Italy really gets my attention.  They do quality work over there.

• Train your eye to look at potential in yardsale pieces and not what they look like at the moment. So many of my favorite things didn’t look like much when I found them, but after I worked some magic on them, they were favorite finds and treasured renovations.  We all know the power of paint and it is one of the easiest ways to transform a yardale find.  Wrong color?  No problem, get out the paint.  Bad stain or nicked up piece?  No problem, paint it!

• If you see something you love and the seller won’t budge on the price, offer to leave your name and phone number and ask them to call you if it doesn’t sell and they are willing to lower the price later. At the end of the day, many sellers are definitely willing to drop those prices just to get rid of stuff!

So, those are my top tips for yardsale success!  Anyone can find treasures out there, I’m convinced of that.  Some girls have told me that we have much better sales down here in the South than elsewhere around the country.  I don’t know how true that is, but I know that the 2 places I’ve lived, Atlanta and Birmingham, both have great neighborhoods and fantastic yardsales to be found.  So, I would suspect that is true in your state as well.

After all of that, I’m going to share with you some of my favorite finds that I’ve found at yardsales and thrifting.  There are so many to choose from, but these show how easy it would be to pass right over a find IF you don’t have the vision of changing it into something wonderful.

Remember, paint is king!

This chair was a lot of fun to do.  Painting it white and adding some collegiate fabric totally changed it from tired and granny to fun and fresh.  I paid $15 for the chair and sold it at my moving sale for $40, so did make a profit.  I’d love to do more of this type of redo, it’s fun to dream up a new look for an old piece.

This child’s dresser was found at an antique mall for $100 and I used it as an entertainment center.  Painting it, adding beadboard wallpaper to the door front and changing the knobs to a more funky vibe changed this piece dramatically too.  I still have this one.

I love this little demilune table and if I remember right, I paid $25 for it at a yardsale several years ago, more than I normally pay for something like this.  It’s a great little accent piece and painting it a moody blue-green updated it a lot.

A little sanding brought out some of the gold underneath.  I kept this piece too.

This plain and not exciting little laminate bookcase was found for $5 and I redid it for the Lovelady Center room redo.  Painting it the same blue-green gave it an instant update.

This half falling apart old vintage plant stand caught my eye for $10 and again, I used that blue-green paint and loved how it turned out.  Perfect for showing off a palm tree and I am still the owner of this fab piece.

Hope this gave you all some new inspiration on getting out there to see what you might find.  If you’ve never tried yardsales, I encourage you to give it a go.  They are so much fun!

There are a TON of parties out there to highlight all your projects, so please let’s keep this one about thrifty finds that were bought 2nd hand!

1. Add your permalink to the link list, which is the actual post that you did for this party, NOT your general blog url. To get the actual post, after you publish the post, just click on the title and THAT will be your party post url. PLEASE try to get the correct url in the first time!
2. Please add my button to your post or blog OR at least link back to this post in your post. That’s all I ask. It’s common courtesy to link back to the person having the party, so that all of your readers can find it too.
3. Please do NOT link to an Etsy shop or something similar (even if you think it’s a fabulous deal) or I will delete the link. This party is for sharing thrifty finds from yardsales, thriftstores, or something along those lines. If I see that your post is not really on track with this theme AND you don’t link back, I’ll delete your link. Sorry, but I’d like to keep the party consistent! IF YOU SEE THAT YOUR LINK HAS BEEN DELETED, IT IS PROBABLY BECAUSE IT IS NOT IN LINE WITH THIS PARTY THEME.

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