Planning Your Yard Sale

Dealing with the clutter, sorting your stuff

The Great Brookland Yard Sale is just 20 days away and it's never too early to start planning. Here's a couple of tips to get you moving.

Have a plan.

Most people dread combing through the house top to bottom looking for yard sale items. Don't. Take baby steps and spend a half hour to an hour a day in each room sorting through items. Price your items as you go to save time. If you are unsure of a reasonable price, try checking e-bay to see what similar items are going for. Set a side a corner of a room to place your yard sale items.

It's in the bag

Yard sales are a great way to reuse those old grocery bags filling up the cabinet under the sink. So take a quick inventory and set aside enough bags so your shoppers can carry away their purchases. The easy it is to carry, the easier it is to buy more items. Also, start saving the newspaper to wrap your more delicate items.

Think about the sale day.

Remember there are more than 30 yard sales scheduled for April 19th. The planning committee is producing maps for participants to hand out to shoppers, but you should also think about placing signs to direct people to your individual yard sale. The main corridors will be 12th and 13th Streets, NE (as well as the other main arteries like Michigan and Rhode Island) for the farther out sales). Oh yes, and adopt a sign from the map (red indicators on the google map) to direct passing cars into Brookland.

A little Change will do you good

Don't forget to be prepared with enough small bills and coins to make some change. You'll need a good supply of one's, several fives, a couple of tens and a good supply of coins.

Read All About It

There are helpful links to yard sale tips on the links to the left of this page. Check em out.


Good luck with your yard sale preparations. Think positively, keep things in perspective and keep telling everyone you know about the upcoming sale!