Letter to the editor: Yard sale tips—The planning stage

Imagine for a moment. You’re driving through your neighborhood. It’s a Saturday morning, the wind is blowing through the leaves of the trees, singing songs of your hometown. You’ve lived here for years. You’ve driven these streets in cars that have long since ceased to roll. You’ve gone to that corner store, you’ve walked to that park, you’ve parked in that lot. You remember how, as a kid, you would travel the town with your mother on Saturday mornings, looking for yard sales full of a variety of home goods and those unique knickknacks you have now come to know as your own. You see a bright pink sign on the street corner, “Yard Sale Today!”

So you want to know where this new yard sale is, right? But while the sign says “Yard Sale!” in four-inch block letters, the location is in quarter inch letters. You have to pull over, walk across the busy street and squint at the sign trying to see where to go. And that’s only if the sign hasn’t blown away already or been drenched in rain.

When creating signs for yard sales, it’s important to remember that your sign is often the most important advertisement. Creating signs that are easy to read from the road increase your chances of people, like me, actually showing up. Though we can’t all have the bright flashing lights of an arrow pointing to the street of your yard sale, we can all at least hand draw arrows on our signs in sharpie marker.

Using a brightly colored, sturdy sign will help passersby read your sign easily without needing to slow down, interrupting traffic. I often find that people who are not interested in yard sales become annoyed with those who are because we have to slow down to try and read signs that are too small or are too hidden by weeds. You may also consider putting the same colored sign as your street corner post in front of your home, pointing people to the right home. Those interested in your yard sale may not be able to see the merchandise in your yard before they’ve already passed your driveway and may feel the need to slam on their brakes, creating more room for accidents.

Once your yard sale is over, it’s just as equally important to take down those signs as it was to put them up. You probably don’t want some stranger pulling up to your house, wondering where the yard sale is a few weeks after it actually happened.

You may also want to consider putting an advertisement in the Valley Courier for your yard sale. If you do, though, you should submit your event to the Courier in advance so people don’t only learn of your yard sale on the day of. Giving people some time in advance to plan to come can help you have a more successful yard sale.

It’s important to support those in our community when they host yard sales and following these simple tips can help your community find you so they can offer their support.

Shirley Kingsley
Hannah Edwards