The two-week garage sale checklist

Two weeks out

• Pick your dates. Thursday to Saturday is the Yuma standard and it matches the three-day limit in city code. Season and timing guidance is here.
• Check your count. You get three sales a year at one address. If you’ve already had two, this is your last one until January.
• Start the pile. One room, one corner. Everything goes there as you find it, unsorted.
• Ask a corner neighbor whether you can put a sign on their property. Do this early — it’s the highest-value legal sign spot you have.

One week out

• Post it online. Local listings and community groups are where Yuma buyers plan their route. Put the dates, the start time, the cross streets and a few photos. Include “yard sale” and “rummage sale” in the title so snowbirds searching their own regional word find you.
• Beg, borrow or buy a clothing rack. Twelve dollars, and it will make you more than anything else on this list.
• Get change. $40 in ones, $20 in fives, a roll of quarters. You will need more ones than you think.
• Pull out the good stuff. Old clothing, leather, work boots, brand-name outerwear. These are worth more than a driveway crowd will pay — set them aside rather than tagging them at $2.
• Book your $20 First Look if you want it. We pay hosts twenty dollars cash to look at the clothing and shoes before opening, and you keep it whether we buy anything or not.

The day before

• Price in groups, not garments. One sign saying “All shirts $2” beats a hundred stickers.
• Make your signs. Dark marker, light board, block capitals, address and arrow only. Read the sign rules first — public property is off limits in Yuma and your arrows will simply disappear.
• Set up as much as you can tonight. Tables out, racks assembled, boxes staged in the garage. Sale morning is not the time.
• Decide your bag price now. Whatever it is, decide it while you’re rested rather than at eleven on Saturday.
• Charge your phone and find an extension cord. You’ll be outside for six hours.

Sale morning

• Be open at 6:30 or 7:00. The buyers who spend real money come first, and they will knock before you’re ready regardless.
• Signs up before you open, not after the first customer.
• Money on your body. Apron or fanny pack. Never a cash box on a table.
• Shade and water. Even in January the Yuma sun is direct by nine.
• Keep the clothing rack at the front. If it’s behind the furniture, nobody reaches it.
• Say yes to reasonable offers. The goal is an empty driveway, not a maximum price on any one item.

Saturday afternoon — the part everyone skips

By early afternoon on the last day, whatever hasn’t sold isn’t going to. This is where most sales quietly fail: everything gets carried back into the garage and sits there until next year, which means you did all this work and still own it all.

• Half price, announced loudly, from mid-morning.
• Fill-a-bag pricing for the last two hours.
• Have somewhere for it to go before Sunday. Decide in advance — sell, donate, or haul.
• Take your signs down. All of them.