How many times do we say, “I need to clean out my closet and rid of this stuff” of course having a good ole garage sale was always the way to go for me. My sister and I would sign up for the sub-sale in her area and make some extra cash! But since moving to Texas, I’m in an apartment now and I’m far from my sister 🙁  So I had to come up with more creative ways to clean out the closet.

Garage sales or sub-sales are awesome! If you can buddy up with someone that may live in a better trafficked area than you, that’s the ticket! Where I lived back in MI, my house was on a dead end and in a located where even putting a sign up wouldn’t do much. But when my sisters sub division she lived in did a neighborhood sale it was awesome! We would make $200 in a weekend easy money and less clutter!

~We were able to share the cost of the permit and the sub-division would advertise the big sale in the city offices, the city’s online website and made signs to post all along the neighborhood and surrounding streets.

~Everyone participated and it brought in so many potential buyers, how great is it to park and walk a block of garage sales. The more the merrier!

Once I moved to Texas I had to find new ways to de-clutter, of course the online options were endless, but which ones worked best? Off the top Ebay has been my biggest money maker. If you set it up right it can really work well for you. First thing is to make sure you have a paypal so you can get paid. Most people do and it’s so worth it,  you can use it to pay for almost anything online safe and secure. I’m even able to send money to friends back home for fundraisers easy-peasy with one click, no writing checks or getting personal info. Just an email and you’re good to go with paypal!  You can go here and to sign up with Ebay !

~Take a few photos or as many photos of the items that you are trying to sell. Ebay doesn’t charge extra for photos of the items. I’ve had the most success with clothing and small items!

~Choose the “Buy now” option, that way you are not dealing with bidders, I’m all about selling it and be done! You can also set how many days you want your item listed.I like the 7 day option, quick and easy. But they do have a 30 day option if you’re not in a big rush!

~Set up for the buyer to pay for shipping. It’s usually not too much, but ebay will calculate the shipping once someone purchases the product based on their location. Sometimes if its small stuff like under 2lbs I just include free shipping because that will catch more potential buyers. This way you can set the weight of your product and your shipping will be in the $2-$3 price range to ship in the U.S. Oh… make sure you disable the international shipping option, you don’t want to deal with that!

~Post your item and wait for it to sell! Ebay is so awesome that it will set up the shipping label with the address info  for you and your buyer, along with shipping. If you are doing free shipping then paypal will allow you to pay for the postage online through them, so you are never dealing with anyone direct or the post office, except to drop your item to ship. Ebay even supplies a tracking number to your buyer with all the info and will update automatically when the items physically ships. You don’t have to bother with too much. I made $35 last week selling clothes my daughter grew out of and a few of my pieces that were more winter-ish. I don’t need those anymore, now that I’m a Texan! So I know using Ebay may be a norm for most, but I just helped out 2 people with using their ebay to make extra cash!

I’ve also used OfferUp, It’s not favorite but I do like it for bigger items. For instance I just sold my fiance’s weight bench he used a handful of times, (no surprise there) but it was taking up room and I was tired of moving it around our apartment. So I posted it and sold it within hours! Offer-up gives anyone the opportunity to look at your items, all you need is an email to sign up, so it’s a little less secure than VarageSale, but I never had a problem, I sell movies, kids toys, and bigger items that aren’t worth shipping.

Another awesome online place is VarageSale…..Yes it’s a virtual Garage Sale. Same how to, take pics, post the details and your asking price. VarageSale only links you up to persons in your immediate area, so once you make a sale, you are not driving far to meet anyone. I love VarageSale because they only accept facebook verified accounts to join. So you can sign up and share your items with your facebook community if you choose to, but if you don’t then you can just post it on the VarageSale site to sell! I know meeting people to make the exchange can be scary. I’ve done it lots of times in the past few weeks and never had a problem. Just make sure someone is always with you when you meet!

My last and newest selling tip is ThreadUP, again you may have heard, but I love it too much not to share! I buy and sell on Thread Up, they give you a great option to get rid of your clothes and pay for all the shipping. All you have to do is sign up online, order your cute polka dot bag to be sent to you and ship it off once you filled it up! Did I say postage paid? What they do is give you a dollar amount for the items your turn in, now the nicer the items the better the offer. You can choose to accept the offer and get payed through PayPal! You can also accept the offer and use to shop (my option most of the time) or you can decline the offer but at the point you will have to pay to have the items shipped back to you. So what’s great is, Thread Up will donate the items they did not accept for you. If you think about it, when you can’t sell it then you usually end up putting it in the donate pile, so this way you are still de-cluttering and you are donating if the items are not accepted. It saves me a drive to the local thrift shop, so I’m O.K with that!

~So my favorite part of ThreadUp is shopping in their online store. So many good selections, from purses to clothing, all sizes and even name brand, they have a super friendly website with filters to look for exactly what you need! I bought a super cute Betsey Johnson purse for half price, and it looks like new!

~And how can you not love the ThreadUp packaging! Anything in polka dots and I’m sold!! How cute is our Daisy posing in our Thread Up box. We entered her in a contest they did but she didn’t win!! Booo .. I know but she was still a good sport, and photo credit to my daughter for taking the awesome pics…she’s such a cutie!

Daisy ThreadUP

So, if you have any questions, please feel free to comment below, they’re are all great options, some better than others. I use them all depending on the items and time I have but they work out great!

One last tip I wanted to share is my Coinstar info. You see those machines everywhere and I know I always thought twice because they keep a good percentage of your coins that you turn in. If you are turning in a lot of coins (over $20) then pick the gift card option, especially with the holidays around the corner, you can’t beat it … There’s NO FEE! All that lose change becomes a paper  e-gift card that is just as good as plastic and you can get them to great places like, Amazon, Best Buy, Forever 21, IHOP, Itunes and Sephora… there’s more but this is the best thing that I came across lately. I never knew, so I had to share! Check out all the places you can get your free paper e- gift card here!
Happy re-selling and thanks for stopping by and please let me know if you have any questions!

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