On Participating in Multi-Family Garage or Yard Sales

My earliest memory of our family hosting a yard sale was during our multi-family garage sale; I was an adolescent. As we lived on a long enough street, even having a third of the street's family participate, even with just a small table, & for a few hours, made for plenty of families participating.

The idea became when my parents were talking with a few others, probably half a dozen, right in our strip. Our street was long & windy, as well as hilly in sections. One of those hills, though a mole hill, crested & turned into a temporary straight-away at our property. It was mainly the houses in that straight-away area that we seemed to acquaint with most often & who my parents first contrived the notion that a multi-family sale would be a good idea for some of us on the street.

It had also been decided that our house number, because of the pattern the numbers made would be the easiest to recall, would be used in the advertisements. Having a multi-family sale shared many burdens. One family could work on poster boards. One could work with the company that sends out the flyers that announced local garage sales (this was long before the internet & craigslist existed) & get us listed. One could work on talking with the other neighbors in order to best include as many neighbors as could be interested in participating. Selecting a mutually convenient Saturday was also a decision for the group.

A particular perk to participating in a multi-family sale is that if, per chance, your household doesn't have much to sell, maybe just one table's worth, or you've only larger items, like a leaf blower, snow blower, wet/dry vac, extendable ladder, treadmill, elliptical, dining room set, etc., it can be more difficult to get passersby to pause & consider your loot. They'll be thinking, "there's not much at that house." and keep on going. You'll be left thinking (especially if you're sensitive), "You didn't even give me a chance 😭." If your next door neighbor, or the folks across the street, have the same amount of items, or more, it can be more attractive, convincing, & overall helpful.

Also, if you arrive at a house & don't see what you need, maybe you're particularly in search of size 2T clothes, the family at that house might know that the family five doors down & across the street to the left of their house has children who've likely outgrown that size & could be selling their clothes. It's almost the same as walking into a retail store, asking about a product, & being told what aisle, & at which end of that aisle, the product is located; it happens.

The neighborhood sale could be set to begin at 8 a.m. & end at 2 p.m. It's up to each household to be prepared for the 8 a.m. crowd & early birds. If they're not, it's that house that's missing out on offering their items to anyone already walking around. If any neighbors would rather not remain "open for business" until 2 p.m., they would be able to individually, & totally on their own, be able to shut down & be done for the day. Again, it's them, & solely them who'd be missing out on passersby. Though, on the afternoon side of things, the more who flake out early tend to diminish results for the result of the 'hood as the passersby do notice & second guess their knowledge of the sale's hours & whether or not there's a likelihood of "enough" houses with sales still "open" for them to bother passing on by. This is when they begin driving on by instead of stopping & trying. Also, they're likely tired from their own long day of treasure hunting.

This idea of a multi-family sale has grown & been renamed many times. Oftentimes housing plans host a sale date for their area, as do subdivisions. Another pro & con to this is that walking about the roadway can be easier as those who'd be driving on the roads are instead likely either buying or selling. The con would be that it can be more difficult to find a place to park your vehicle, as there might be that many buyers clogging up the parallel parking spots likely located in between neighboring driveways. Additionally, it's harder to shop your neighbors' sales when you're standing behind a table of your own. If there's multiple people helping at your sale, say someone else in the family, or a family friend who's not from your neighborhood, then you might be able to step away for a few minutes to consider your neighbor's trash as your treasure.

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