Whew! I haven't worked as hard as I did this weekend during our yard sale ALL SUMMER! I ended up getting to Louisville a little later than I had hoped, but it was for a good reason. I had thought that my fingerprint background check from last year would be recent enough for our home study, but our agency wanted me to redo my fingerprints, and an appointment opened up early Thursday morning! So I went to that and then packed up my car and headed to Louisville. I had a big to do list for Thursday night since I hadn't been in town to price everything although I had spent the week before Florida trying to organize all of our items, and boy were there a lot. My mom kept telling me that I needed to find some card tables to use because of all of the donations we had, and I didn't understand what she meant until I arrived home and saw all of the stuff piling up my parent's living room, dining room, back bedroom, basement and garage. The house was literally overflowing.. in a good way! My sister did a great job gathering donations and card tables, and I couldn't have done any of this without her. We started pricing clothing items and after a few hundred pieces, called it a night and vowed to wake up super early to finish. The yard sale was scheduled to begin at 8am so I woke up at 4:30 to start setting up. Yes, I typed that correctly! 4:30am came very quickly! I can honestly say that for 3 hours we were just bringing items outside and never stopped... not even once! Early birds were wanting to shop early, but we had to have them wait because all my help was about to leave at about 8:30, and I couldn't do it alone! Here are some pictures from our yard sale on Friday.
Because it was a weekday, my mom, dad, and sister were working, but my brother was able to help out all day, and my mom arrived around 10am (she works night shift). Once my mom got there, we started bringing more items out to sell. We kind of got into a routine. One person would watch the money box and help customers, one person would bring stuff outside to sell and the last person would price the items and organize them on the tables. We literally did not stop bringing stuff outside until 6pm. And when we closed up shop at 7pm that night we still had rooms of donations still inside. I really want to say thank you to everyone who donated items because without you, this whole sale would not have been possible. Want to know how much we made on Friday? Drum roll..... $560.20! In one day! I was amazed and thankful and so ready to get some rest and get ready for Saturday... the biggest yard sale day of them all!
5am came super early on Saturday, and just like the morning before, we started setting up. The easier part about setting up on Saturday was that the day before my mom had cleaned out the garage (long overdue) and we were able to keep some of the tables set up with the items on them to make the set up process easier. We still had a lot of items inside, and we kept bringing those out over the course of the day! So many people that stopped by Friday stopped by again on Saturday and were confused. One lady even asked, "Are these all new items?!" We laughed and said, "yes," because we weren't even able to get everything outside on Friday. I didn't take any pictures on Saturday because we were so busy, but we DOUBLED the money that we made on Friday! We made over $1100 dollars on Saturday for a grand total around $1650! The funny thing was that we really weren't selling a lot of furniture which goes for higher dollar amounts at yard sale. We had a couple pieces but not a lot! We did have a few ladies that stocked up on clothes and spent over $100 on clothing items priced anywhere from 25 cents to $5.00. We were very thankful for their business!
I acually do have ONE picture from Saturday. It started to rain a little bit, so we put up a tarp to cover all of the items. We got a laugh at watching people try to shop in the rain. Hey... those yard salers are committed!
So on Saturday people kept asking us if that was our last day, and I kept thinking about it and thought of all the stuff we still had to sell and how not having the sale on Sunday would be a waste of an opportunity. I mean, the two days we had already done turned out fabulous, so why shouldn't we have the sale on Sunday as well? So we loaded up everything into the garage, I treated my family to dinner as a thank you for all their help, watched a movie as a family and headed to bed to rest up for Sunday.
After Saturday, we had finally been able to get everything out of the house and available for purchase. Here are some pictures of our sale from Sunday!
Alex was able to come down on Saturday evening, and he did a great job organizing all of the tables. All of us were burnt out on making the tables look nice, so he took over that job for us! Sunday was very, very slow, and I didn't think it would be very busy, but I thought we would have more people than we did. We made around $150-$175 which was still worth it, and we started packing everything up at 4pm. The biggest part of Sunday was trying to figure out what to do with everything that didn't sell! We ended up taking all of the books to Half-Price and we made $30 there. We took a big box of clothes to Plato's Closet and made $50 there as well! We donated NINETEEN bags of clothes and household items to LifeBridge Warehouse at Southeast which was a blessing because we were able to give back at the end. People were giving to help us and we were able to help pass along that blessing to others! I also took a box of children't clothes to a children's consignment shop and a few tubs of nicer clothing to a consignment shop down the street from me. All of the money that we make there will go towards our adoption as well!
So in total, we made about $2,000! It was such a great weekend, and I'm so thankful for everyone who donated items, tables, or participated in any way. We couldn't have done it without you. Thank you to my family who spent an entire weekend helping Alex and I. It was so much work, and we are so thankful for all of your help. And thank you to those who stopped by and purchased items! I hope you are enjoying your spoils as much as I am enjoying mine! Yes... of course I went shopping at my own yard sale. I love a good deal! Here are some of my spoils.
Lastly, but most importantly, thank you to God for showing up. Thank you for your church coming together to help orphans and those called to give them families. Thank you for your provision, your perfect timing and your love and grace over our lives each day.
