Best way to display clothing at garage sale

[ResortsFrmrCM]

Hi all! I am preparing to host my first garage sell in three weeks and have been reviewing tips on this board and on the web for weeks now.

What I can't figure out: what is the best way to diplay baby/kids clothes?

I want to make it simple for the buyer and don't want a heap of clothing on a table but I don't own any portable clothing racks at all. I thought I could neatly stack everything according to sex and size but I imagine that table is going to look like a disaster before long!! I have so many cute sets of clothing that I want to display as outfits, along with lots of separates.

Anyone have any advice they could offer???

Thanks so much!

 

[Mel6197]

Before I got some Racks..

Crap clothing in a bin for 25 cents a piece let the Dig.. who cares.. that becomres a HUGE mess in a hour or 2 of the sale.



My nice stuff on hangers against a fence line

Or what about making a rack?

Like 2 ladders and a pole in the middle to hang stuff on?
The first yard sale for me will be in about 3 weeks time.

Need some Disney $ for all the tips not on the Dining plan , Stroller increase, Buns at 1.99
LOL..


And more important the SPACE in my house!

Granny just came to live with us, so now I have alot ALOT less space.. She has taken over a bedroom and 1\2 the basement with her stuff..

 

[Mickey & Minnie Mom]

In the past, I have put the "best" outfits on hangers to make sure they could be seen. I have used sawhorses as clothes racks and have used nails in the drywall of the garage to hold some as well.

For the rest, I sorted them by size, placed them in a clear storage tub and placed a sign on the side of each listing the sizes that could be found in that tub. You could also do by sex if you have the room & storage tubs. I also put the prices on the sign as well -- ie Outfits $2.00, pajamas $1.50/set, Single Pieces, $.50 each.

This kept the clothes contained and clean while directing buyers to the sizes they were looking to buy.

Hope that helps and good luck with your sale.

 

[timzagain]

At our last garage sale, we used tables for items like jeans. For most of the other clothes, we strung clothes lines in the garage and hung the clothes on hangers. For two-piece sets, the items were pinned together.

If you have a piece of trellis fence, old louvered doors/ shutter, you could mount or align those items against a wall, and hang the clothes (on hangers) on them. Just twist the hooks of the wire hangers so that the clothes will lie flat against fence/ shutters. A sheet of plywood with a few makeshift hooks (nails) can be used as well.

Hope this helps. Hope you have a very successful sale!

 

[LynnTH]

We have a friend who has 3 rounders (like the ones in the stores). So, we use those and use 1 for girls clothes, 1 for boys clothes and 1 for adults. I try to hang as much as possible. Also, a few years back I bought (off the internet) some sizer's to put on the rounders. I have 2 sets of each size from 3 months to size 20 and XS to XL. So, I put those on the rounders so people can go to the correct sizing for them (just like a store). It has really worked out great.

I used to own a few rounders but sold them many years ago as I didn't have room to store them (wish I never did that).

 

[marenian]

I'm having a garage sale next week as well and it will be the first time with kids/baby stuff. I hope to hang as much as possible of the baby stuff. I have all my DDs things sorted and priced, still need to do DSs but my problem is that I've run out of kids' hangers! I only have one hanging rack (that normally stores out of season coats) but DH will be fashioning something for me out of ladders and pipe clamps or whatever else he can come up with. Even two ladders and a broom/mop handle will work for you.

Most of the T-shirts and jeans/pants will go on a table. My sis also gave me some tips: for things like socks, sleepers, onesies, etc. you can put 2 or 3 in a clear plastic bag to sell together. I will probably do that with DDs baby onesies since many of those came in sets.

All I know is that this is a LOT of work! Even worse when you have a box of toys for the sale put together and the kids get into it and empty the box and scatter the 'sell' toys amongst the keepers! Good thing they will be at daycare the day of the sale!

 

[Siouxstone]

A few weeks ago, I sold alot of our old baby clothes at my yard sale. Since I didn't have a way of hanging everything, I sorted the baby clothes into a box labeled with the size. Then, I put several signs up with the price listing. That way I didn't have to tag the clothes. Lots of shoppers commented on how nice it was to just go to the specific sizes they were looking for.

Good luck.

 

[tonilea]

Cheap plastic 'chain' strung between two trees or ladders makes a great place to hang items and they won't get all squished together making things hard to see.

 

[kjs1976]

What do people charge? My DD is only almost 4 mos. and we already have bags of clothes she didn't wear or wore maybe once. I was planning on charging more for those clothes. Most have tags still on or we washed once in dreft in preparation of use, but never did. If it's brand named, like Gap, etc. I was planning to charge $2-3 for an outfit and $1 for a sleeper. I have a ton of sleepers, especially w/o feet (bag type) because she didn't like them.

Any thoughts on this also?

 

[merekc]

We separate kids clothes into sex and size. So we have tables that are girls clothes, and ones that are only boys. We pull out our totes and boxes, etc. Sort the clothes into a container and mark it so we will have Boys 0-12mo, 18-24 mo, 2T, 3T, etc. All these clothes we charge $.50 per piece. If they match up an outfit, it would be $1.00 (.50x2). Then we do a rack of our namebrand clothes (Tommy, Chaps, etc) and our New With tags. We price these individually anywhere from $1.50 on up depending on items. Most NWT namebrand items go for around $4-5 here. We have on multiple occassions bought clothes with the intent to resell. For example, we found Chaps boys shirts at Kohls and paid about $1.50 each. We then sold $5 each (and didn't have to pay Ebay and paypall fees nor deal with shipping - we were happy with it).

We do not mess with our adult clothes, they don't sell at all. WE just donate them. We have tons of kids clothes and this works well for us (my sister and I do a sale together). We always make over a $1000. Our goal is to move it and make money. You can price your used clothes higher, but then we find we make more per piece but sell less clothes. We end up making about the same doing it this way. We also have soooo many clothes because we love to shop! It is overwhelming to the shopper and they go through it because we aren't asking too much. If things slow down on the last day or we get ready to close up we go to $1 or $2 bag sale. What you can fit in the bag for that amount.

If you don't have tons a clothes, you could get into pricing each individual outfit. This just doesn't work for us.

The other thing we do that really helps us is we put a sign at the end of the driveway that lists what we have. Our big ticket items (Strollers, etc) as well as the sizes of kids clothes we have (i.e. Boys 2T - 5T, Girls 4T - 6x etc). I think this encourages people to not just drive by. They can see we have their kid's sizes and they stop and check us out.

 

[merekc]

One more thing, when you get ready to sell your baby clothes, you will pull them out of the tote (where you put the clean unstained clothes in that were outgrown) and find they have developed mystery stains (from spitups). Throw them in the wash before you sell them and these stains will most of the time go away.

 

[cheerforchelsea]

I try to hang up as many clothing items as possible.....they always seem to sell better if they are hanging. I have used fences, broom handles, pieces of old pipe, and a trampoline as a place to hang clothes....Good Luck

 

[Wall E]

Not trying to hijack the thread, but wanted to pass on an idea of what to do with some of the clothes that you kids outgrow.

My wife got our local church to let her use the recreation room at the church to host a kids clothing swap for people from the church. They advertised in the church bulletin.

My wife and some other moms organized it and basically they set it up so you got a ticket for every kids outfit you brought in and donated to the swap. Then you could use the tickets to select from the outfits donated by people in your kid's current sizes. The only rule was that the clothing had to be clean and no holes or rips.

It was a pretty big success and we got a ton of "new to us" outfits in great shape and got rid of a lots of stuff the kids don't use anymore. They donated all the left over clothing to a local shelter.

Just throwing this out there because its free and you might get more bang for your buck than you would selling the stuff at a garage sale.

Good luck on your garage sale!

 

[Mic]

We fenced in our large backyard MANY years ago(14?), and my DH had a few chainlink fence poles left over from that. I don't know what you call the different sized poles, but he uses three of the "main/support-type" poles, and stakes them securely into the ground. Then he strings a long(10-12 foot) pole across the top(the ones you see running across the top of a chainlink fence). All of the materials were purchased at Lowe's, and I would imagine they are pretty cheap. He has a tool that forces the big support poles into the ground, but I'm sure your husband could do this without having to buy the tool. Our neighbors have a few strong hooks anchored ijnto their home's exterior for hanging plant baskets. She stings a white chain between two of these hooks to hang her baby clothes. My SIL hangs items on a string on her front porch between poles. Whatever you do, hang your nice clothing in the back of your yard-sale area so folks will have to walk by the other things to get to them.

 

[2minnies]

I've had luck at our local Kohl's and Target getting plastic hangers they were going to throw away.