A Money -Maker For Our Family ~ Part 1

 Many people don't realize the financial prowess us homeschool moms have to attain to keep down the costs of homeschooling our children.  If you are new to homeschooling, you will immediately begin to pick up ways to "pinch those pennies."  For those of us that have been homeschooling a few years, we have picked up many tried and true ways that keep our homeschooling budget from delving into the family budget.  One of our family's ways of doing this is to have a yearly gigantic garage sale......not something I grandly look forward to but something that makes for a better school year on our pocketbook and in the end, teaches our children several vital lessons in the process.

We start as soon as the last garage sale ends in bagging up anything not needed or wanted anymore and putting it up in the attic. By Christmas time, my husband is starting to grumble when he has to get past the bags of garage sale items to get our Christmas decorations, but I always remind him that it pays off and by the time he has wrestled with hauling the Christmas decorations down and the attic door is closed, he agrees with me......that is, until he has to put the Christmas decorations back up there!  Once our school is done in May, we start working through all the rooms in our house and getting rid of even more "stuff"...it's amazing what piles up when you're not looking!

This is a wonderful teaching moment with older children in training them that the less we have, the less we have to clean....interesting how that always prompts my children to get rid of a few more items they were hanging on to but rarely play with! At the moment, we have made it through all the rooms in our house except for the little girls closet, my closet, and the schoolroom. After that, we will begin to pull down bags from the attic and start sorting.

Yet again, this another skill to hand over to my older children. Last year, they went through our bags of clothes (this is a monumental task since we have other family members donating clothes as well as other items for our sale!) and sorted all sizes into different boxes for buyers. I think this has been a key for our family in having such a successful garage sale.....we organize as much as possible for the buyer.....and it's wonderful to see my children take such pride in putting things in their "category." This means that if a buyer comes in wanting 4T clothes, my children will immediately direct them to box containing those clothes.

Driving around the week before the garage sale usually provides us with enough boxes to separate all the clothes. As for prices? I learned a valuable lesson from my mother-in-law (who always had fantastic successful garage sales) about pricing at garage sales that has carried me far. Price to sell.....it's that simple. People do not come to garage sales wanting clothes that cost $5 or more. They come for deals. If I have an expensive nice clothing item, I usually opt for consignment or lately, the Sweet Pea Swap here in Meridian. Other than that, clothes in boxes are fifty cents and hanging clothes for the most part are one to two dollars. I know you would think that we can hardly make any money with those rules but one, we usually have a LOT of clothes (since again, we have people giving us clothes for the sale as well as being a family of six), and two, people tend to buy MORE and stay LONGER at a garage sale if the prices are LOW.

Now, I have definitely enjoyed my time at garage sales in the past for those "special deals,"(just too exhausting lugging all the kids to them these days), but I can tell you that when I have entered a garage sale and looked at a few prices of the items, I can usually tell if the seller wants to get rid of their items and make money or the seller wants to sell things at what they think their value is and supposedly make a large amount of money. A seller that wants to get rid of their items will have them priced low and it is a place where I tend to take my time looking for the deals I know are there..... and in my experience, (since I have tried both ways!) you will usually make more money if you entice your customers to stay with your low prices.

Well, I've had enough time at the computer for now....time to start cleaning more out! Next time, we'll talk of the great teaching experiences you can give your children with the garage sale. I can say that even with all the work it entails, my children look forward to and learn so much from our garage sales when I take the time to teach valuable skills to them while we are processing all our items and during our sale.