Garage Sales for Profit and Fun!: A Money-Making Guide to the Deceptively Simple Art of Selling Surplus Household Goods

Janet Arnett is the former campus manager of adult education at Ontario’s Georgian College. She is the author of Antiques and Collectibles: Starting Small, The Grange at Knock, and 673 Ways to Save Money.

Debilitated by the clutter in your house? Worried the neighbors will
laugh at your puny discards? Here’s help in the form of an
all-Canadian guide to holding a socially, psychologically, and
financially successful garage sale.

Down with sentimentality, out with clutter, on with the sale. With this
battle cry as his theme, Stratas leads the reader step-by-step through
the process: emotional preparation, pricing, haggling, advertising,
taxation, social benefits, timing, display techniques, humor, signage,
cash management, staffing, security . . . even getting rid of the junk
you can’t sell at any price.

The how-tos aside, Stratas takes a foray into urban anthropology and
presents garage sales as an important contribution to community life—a
means to conquer social isolation and a contributor to mental health by
liberating clutter from the mind as well as the home. Added to this is a
section on character profiles of different types of buyers, browsers,
and shoplifters. Hardly Sociology 101 material, but some nice titbits to
occupy your mind while waiting for your garage sale customers.

The book concludes with a few tips for holding garage sales in
high-rises, neighborhood sales, and sales organized by businesses and
charities.