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Summary In this episode, Michelle Passoff discusses running your estate sale. She provides tips on how to prepare for the sale, organize the items, price them, and promote the event. Michelle also shares advice on setting up the sale to maximize security and flow of traffic. She emphasizes the importance
DIY Estate Sales
Michelle: Welcome once again to Decluttering 55 Plus with Michelle Passoff.
Michelle: I’m Michelle Passoff. This is the place to come for news you can use to get things done in life without anything in the way on the road ahead. The things we talk about on this podcast include letting go of conventional clutter, like too many clothes, too much paper and other stuff. But it doesn’t stop there.
Michelle: We stretch the definition of clutter to things that are either in the way of what’s next in life or that slow you down. These are usually things that confound and confront you. So we sweep them under the carpet to be dealt with another day or never. Just the thought of energizing your health and fitness regimen, telling your side of the story to the younger generation, and digital decluttering may overwhelm you.
Michelle: Deciding where to move or what to do next in life, getting your financial house in order, and even making funeral arrangements can occur like a mixed up jumbled mess if you don’t address some of these topics as you age. So decluttering 55 plus is the place to come to talk about these things and see if we can sort things out so that in the end you invigorate your life and create a legacy, not a mess.
Michelle: Today, I’m going to talk about running your own estate sale. No guests today, just me. I’ll explain why I’m qualified to do this. I wrote a book called lighten up for yourself from clutter published by Harper perennial. And for more than 30 years, I have consulted with clients on cleaning clutter. Also, I have led seminars all over the world about decluttering.
Michelle:
Michelle: if you want to run your own estate sale, you’ll need decluttering skills because you stand to sell more stuff and make more money. If your sale is impeccably organized. For 14 years, I owned an estate sale company in Tampa Bay, Florida, a region with about 4 million people. I know how to prepare a sale and market it, run the sale, and clean out after the sale is over.
Michelle: If you run an estate sale on your own, you’ll save the 35 percent to 40 percent commission you’ll have to pay a professional outfit to run the sale for you. But if you prepare yourself to spend the time and effort to learn what needs to be done and then do it, this will carry the day. Even if you decide in the end not to conduct an estate sale on your own, but instead to turn the job over to a professional company, knowing and understanding how things get done can help you be a better client.
Michelle: So let’s get started. First, assess your move out schedule. If you’re not planning to move out, but still have stuff to sell, conduct a yard sale. You don’t want a stream of estate sale shoppers foraging through a home that is a mix of stuff you’re keeping and stuff you’re selling. Everything remaining in the house should be for sale when you open your doors the morning of the estate sale.
Michelle: If you’re selling your home, I would do all the preparation of the estate sale and run the sale before you put your house on the market. You can always show your house empty or have a staging company decorate it to make it an attractive to prospective buyers. Also, if you’re going to do an estate sale with or without an outside company, speak to your insurance company to make sure your coverage for an estate sale.
Michelle: Also, if you’re going to do a sale with or without an outside company, speak to your insurance company to make sure you have coverage for an estate sale, or if you need to buy additional coverage for the estate sale event. With an eye toward wherever you’re going to move to, go room to room. and identify everything from small knickknacks to large furniture and determine what you’re going to be taking.
Michelle: If you’re moving to an area of the country with a different climate, things in your current home may not be in style at your destination. For example, heavy dark furniture, which fits perfectly in more northern climates, is out of place in warm and sunny Florida. If you sell the furniture, instead of trekking thousands of miles, you can use the profit to buy fresh and new things.
Michelle: Also, you may want to make a room plan for the new place to make sure what you want to take even fits. As many people downsize when they move out of a home where they’ve lived in for many years and where they’ve raised a family, you won’t need as much as you once had. Now, designate a room, wing of the house, or a part of the garage to stash furniture and boxes of things that will not be sold in the estate sale and that are safely cordoned off from estate sale shoppers.
Michelle: If you cannot do this, then see if your moving company accommodates its clients with temporary storage or if you have to get a short term storage place for what you’re taking with you. Perhaps you can even move into your new place before you stage your home for the estate sale. Next, pack up your clothes, tools, dishes, and housewares, lamps, tables, couches, and beds you’re taking with you.
Michelle: Pack small things in boxes and label each box on two sides by using white fax paper and a fat sharpie pen so you can see at a glance what’s in that box. Be sure to have packing paper to cushion the breakables. This may take some time and you may need help. Just plan to make this part of the process as stress free as possible.
Michelle: Be kind to yourself in this process because change is not easy and neither is moving. Once the only thing you have in the house is what you will be selling, go room to room, grouping like kind things. Think of your home as a retail store, and you’re the merchandiser there to make everything in the home appealing to buy.
Michelle: You can use the tops of beds, dressers, counters, and tables to display things. Also, use folding tables you have or can borrow to lay out your items. Convert your bedroom into a boutique and put clothes for sale in open closets. Organize them skirts with skirts, pants with pants, etc., and price each and every item.
Michelle: Turn the kitchen into the housewares department, the garage into a hardware department, And if you have decorative baskets all over the house, bring them to one place and call that the home decor spot. Open cabinets and take out things in the drawers, so that they can be seen and priced.
Michelle: I like to use masking tape to price each item. The reason that I think it’s important to be thorough in organizing and pricing items is that people will be less likely to haggle for a better price or keep asking you pesky questions about how much something costs. You won’t have to make it up on the spot or start researching on the phone for the answer.
Michelle: The pricing and organizing in advance will make your sale run smoothly. If the home where the estate sale is taking place has a second floor, assess whether it would be safer to bring furniture from upstairs to the first floor before the sale begins.
Michelle: Oftentimes it is too cumbersome and dangerous to move the furniture in a crowded house. You may not have the personnel or the muscle to move the items safely, and it may be all too complicated and discouraging for a potential buyer. You want to keep the property safe to avoid any injuries. Once you do all this and the house is organized, you’ll be ready to price everything.
Michelle: Thank goodness for the internet because it’s easy to check for retail prices of things. Price your items about 30 percent of the average retail price. Maybe you’ll even remember what you paid for something. If you have an antique or expensive item, and would feel comfortable having an appraiser come to tell you the amount you should charge for the item, have the appraiser come to your home when everything else is organized and priced.
Michelle: Thank Even if you haven’t finished organizing for the sale, about a month before the sale, you can start to advertise it on sites like estatesales. net, estatesales. org, Facebook Marketplace, and Craigslist. If you have nextdoor. com or Patch in your neighborhood, then advertise there. They will charge you a small fee to list your sale on some of those sites.
Michelle: Be prepared to post photos of what you’re selling. Take clutter free photos of your items, isolating each item from each other so that prospective buyers can appreciate it without a lot of distraction. You do not list the prices on the internet or in the listings, as people need to come to the sale to find that information out.
Michelle: when should you plan to run your sale? I always figured that given you spent all that time organizing, pricing, merchandising, and promoting your sale, that it’s worth it to make the most of it. I recommend scheduling a sale for Friday, Saturday, and Sunday from 8 or 9 a. m. to 4 p. m. or 5 p. m. On the Sunday of your sale, you may close at 3 p.
Michelle: m. to give you time to organize the remaining items or donate to a charity at the end of the sale. I know that many sales only go until two and only one or two days. I figure though, as long as you’re there anyway, just go for it. In my book, it would be a bit more backbreaking to do all this preparation on your own.
Michelle: So recruit a team of friends or family members to help, to help you lay out the grand plan, divide up the chores and schedule your time regularly in advance of your sale opening date to get everything ready in a fun way. Remember on the other side of this project is a new and exciting future.
Michelle: Before the sale, think about putting up roadside signs, leading people to your door. I always like to put the signs in strategic locations, leading shoppers right to your door. There’s nothing worse than following an estate sale sign but being left in the middle of no place before reaching the destination.
Michelle: Make the words estate sale visible and instead of writing the address, which is usually too small to read and passers by move too quickly to take note, use arrows that point shoppers to the right direction until their arrival. Remember after the sale to pick up those signs as you don’t want the reputation for being someone who litters.
Michelle: Also, in advance of your sale, arrange with a local charity that has a thrift store or the Salvation Army or Goodwill to pick up items that have not been sold. If they can come at 5 p. m. on the last day of your sale, that’s ideal. Bing bang boom, you’re out of there.
Michelle: Or, arrange early the following week for them to empty the rest of the house.
Michelle: One other thing you’ll want to be sure to do is to set up the sale so the flow of traffic through the house is safe and maximizes security. I like to guide shoppers in one door with only one way out and that’s past the cashier. For example, people may enter a house through the front door and be guided to exit past the table with two cashiers at the garage exit.
Michelle: Make sure you have a cash box with about 300 in 10, 5, and 1 bills, as well as about 25 in change, so that you can give change right off the bat to shoppers. As the homeowner, it will not be necessary to charge tax or have a license. You should check, however, before planning the sale that your town, community, or neighborhood doesn’t require that you have a permit.
Michelle: Some gated communities or towns do require this. On the days of your sale, have a greeter at the front door and if possible, at least one person in each room to answer questions or to usher purchases to the cashier while the guest continues to shop. On the first day of the sale, I would limit any bargaining to only people making very large purchases.
Michelle: Otherwise, invite people back for bargains the next two days, maybe 20 percent on day two and 50 percent on day three. Just say that things are priced the way they are and it’s a no haggling sale. Once the sale is over, you’ll have to have boxes on hand to pack the remaining items for the charity unless the charity brings their own helpers to do this.
Michelle: Every day after the sale, bring the cash home. count it, and restock your cash box with change. If all this sounds like a big undertaking, it is, but with enough time and planning, it’s possible to do it yourself. But if you don’t feel comfortable doing it, or you don’t have the time, take the initiative to select two or three professional companies to interview and do all of this for you.
Michelle: Then choose the best. Again, you can find these companies on estatesales. org or estatesales. net. You may want to visit a few sales in your neighborhood before you select a company to determine the one that seems established, trustworthy, and organized. When this ordeal is over, you’re likely to forget that it ever happened, and you’ll be happy to have turned a corner in your life in a new way that will be well done.
Michelle: So, congratulations. I want to thank you for taking the time to learn all these things that can help you move ahead in life with ease and enjoyment. Please like us on Facebook, follow us on Instagram and subscribe to our YouTube channel. Like us, follow us, subscribe to us on your podcast platform.
Michelle: You’re listening from today because we want to grow this community. Visit our website at www.
Michelle: decluttering55plus. com and go to the Let’s Connect page and give us your comments and suggestions and requests. And by all means, share with us your experiences so we can let others know of your successes. We’ll get out there and be great. And we’ll see you next week. So have a clutter free day!