This past week I organized a community yard sale. It’s purpose was to be a small fundraiser for our middle school (and we succeeded on that front) but more importantly it was a service we wanted to offer folks like myself, who live in a place that is not conducive to having a yard sale.

All told the event was a success. We sold 27 spots and made a couple hundred bucks to help support middle school field trips and other services that our budget-strapped district can no longer afford to finance. Nonetheless, were I to do this event again, there would be some things I would keep the same and some I would change up. In case you’re planning your own yard sale, you may find these “keep” and “change up” suggestions to be helpful.

KEEP

• Set up in a high-traffic location. We were lucky enough to secure a large patch of grass on the school campus, which happens to be on a main street in our town. We were adjacent to one of our school’s parking lots that visitors use when coming to our little tourist town for the weekend. Nearly everyone who parks in this lot had to walk by or through our yard sale to get to the sidewalks that lead into town, and this created an ideal high-traffic situation for all of our yard sale participants.
• Time your yard sale to piggy back onto another event. We chose to have our yard sale on the same weekend when there was a special event going on in town–an annual festival that draws people from hundreds of miles away. Additionally, there was a school play the same day as our yard sale, meaning there would be lots of parents parking in the parking lot near where we’d set up. This combination allowed us proximity to tons of potential shoppers.
• Use the “Priceline” approach to pricing. I know that many people spent time pricing their items before bringing their things to the yard sale. I was going to do the same until my mother, who was in town to help me out and who is a veteran yard-sale organizer, told me not to bother. She suggested we take a “Priceline” approach and let people name their own price or at least ask us to name the price. Though it was somewhat annoying to keep having to answer “How much is this?” I found that answering, “How does $X sound?” made most people accept our suggestion or at least offer a counter–and then we made the sale.
• Have plentiful, clear signage directing people to your yard sale. I used a combination of sandwich boards and lawn signs that not only told people when our yard sale was but I also included directional arrows to quite literally point them in the right direction to find our yard sale. While the high-traffic location helped draw drive-by traffic, I know from some of the questions that people asked me when they got to the sale that the signs had helped to draw them in as well.
• Arrange to have someone take away the leftovers at the end of the day. I knew from talking with my mother about yard sales that she’d organized in the past that having a way for people not to bring home the items they didn’t sell would be a huge selling point. And she was right. So I arranged for a good cause to come at the end of the yard sale, with a big truck, and take anything that the yard sale participants wanted to donate and didn’t want to take home with them. Case in point: it took two cars loaded with stuff for me to set up my yard sale area–I had that much to sell. Going home? All I had was my folded-up table and some empty bins. Best of all: I can walk around my basement again, which is where I’d been storing most of the stuff I was planning to sell at the yard sale.

CHANGE UP

• Move the starting and ending time up. We were supposed to run from 10 to 3, but as soon as we started setting up around 8:30, we had shoppers. Additionally, by noon, there was a real lull in traffic, and that foot traffic stayed low until about 2:30. So while we had some decent traffic for the last 30 minutes of the yard sale, I don’t know if it was worth waiting around for those two hours for the customers to come back.
• Have a rain date when it isn’t raining. Originally, our plan was to have a rain date, but our rain date was that the yard sale would go on, rain or shine, the next day. Lucky for us, Saturday was picture-perfect weather. Sunday, on the other hand, was dreary, dark and wet, and if we’d had to have our sale that day, there would have been zero traffic. Despite a special event happening in town, no one was out–and they sure as heck weren’t shopping for yard sales. Next year I’ll be sure to arrange to have a rain date for when it’s not raining and not take the “rain or shine” approach. It won’t be worth it.
• Let people bring their own tables. We sold spots at a certain price for us to provide a table, and then offered a discount if you just wanted a spot but would bring your own table. While 17 of the 27 people who bought spots wanted us to provide a table, the set up and clean up required to haul out and then put away that many tables wasn’t worth the little extra money that this “convenience” provided. Next year we’ll just sell spots for a fixed fee, and the table situation will be left up to each individual seller.

Bottom line: I got rid of tons of clutter and made some extra money–actually more than I’d ever made at garage sales I’d had in the past or even from selling stuff on Craigslist. Based on this year’s success, I would definitely participate in this kind of yard sale next year. Let me know if you have other ways that you’ve made your own yard sales successful.

Happy Earth Day!

Here is the video from my “Green This, Not That” segment that aired on Wednesday, April 21st on the “10! Show” on NBC 10 in Philadelphia:

One of my favorite ways to use pillowcases is to store the sheet sets they belong to right inside the pillowcase. This makes changing the sheets a snap, since I don’t have to go hunting for anything.

But sometimes pillowcases get orphaned like socks or they get so threadbare that you dare not put them on your pillows anymore. So what are you to do with them, especially if you don’t want to throw them away? Here are 3 creative reuses for old pillowcases that I thought could save you some money and stick with this week’s green theme.

1. Turn a pillowcase into a clothing cover. Those plastic bags that clothes come home from the dry cleaner in are the worst thing that you could store your clean clothes in–that’s because they encourage mildew. Pillowcases, on the other hand, will breathe. So cut a hole in the sewed side of an old pillowcase and slip it over any clothes you’d like to protect. (I read this tip in Good Housekeeping’s awesome 125th anniversary issue, May 2010.)
2. Slip them over a fan to keep dust off the blades. Even better you can use them to dust the fan, and all the dust will fall into the folds of the pillowcase!
3. Pack them as a dirty laundry bag. Everyone comes home from vacation with dirty laundry. Rather than mix stinky clothes with the clean ones, pack a pillowcase or two that your family can use for holding dirty laundry along the way.

Do you have other creative reuses for pillowcases?

Bundle.com, a new money-comparison website, recently did a survey on Americans’ spending habits, broken down by the 50 states. Turns out it’s nearly impossible to living frugally in states where you’re surrounded by spendthrifts–especially if you live in one of these top 10 spendthrift states. (The number in parentheses is the amount residents spent, on average, on things like eating out and shopping.)

1. Connecticut ($57,331)

2. District of Columbia ($49,430)

3. Hawaii ($46,518)

4. California ($42,962)

5. Texas ($42,623)

6. Arizona ($41,752)

7. Illinois ($41,627)

8. New York ($40,783)

9. Maryland ($40,538)

10. Washington ($40,480)

Pennsylvania, where I live, ranked #42 (that surprised me) with annual spending of $32,452. My neighbor to the East, New Jersey, was #21 with $38,634 in spending. By the way, the national average is $37,782.

If you’d like to see how your state ranks, visit the Bundle Report 2010 website.

Even if you don’t celebrate Easter, now is a great time to hit the stores and stock up on supplies that you can use and enjoy long after this spring holiday has come and gone. Here are 6 tips to make the most of any money you might spend at an after-Easter sale.

1. Pick Up Pink and Purple Everything. There was a long time when my daughter Jane favored anything pink and my daughter Annie loved everything purple. During that period I would take advantage of after-Easter sales to get them clothing and accessories in pink and purple, since store aisles always seem to be bursting with items in these hues at Easter.
2. Get a Sweet Deal on Candy. Halloween may be six months away, but if you can get individually wrapped candies now for dirt cheap prices, who cares if they come in Easter colors instead of Halloween colors? Throw the bags in your freezer and fuggedaboutit until October! Your budget will thank you.
3. Bag Some Bargain Baskets. Sometimes I like to bring housewarming or hostess gifts in a clever container, and that container of choice is often a basket. Now is a great time to find bargains on baskets that stores stocked up but never sold for Easter.
4. Buy Next Year’s Dress-Up Clothes. When my daughters were little, I always stocked up on dress up clothes for the next year’s holiday right after the current year’s holiday had passed. I would buy pretty dresses in a couple of sizes, and then come the next year, whatever didn’t fit, I would sell on eBay. Of course, this stocking up makes sense only if you can get these fancy clothes at deeply discounted prices.
5. What’s Good for the Easter Bunny Is Good for a Baby. Have you ever looked closely at the kinds of decorations that stores market for nurseries–baby bunnies, chicks and cute little lambs? Well, these are the same iconic animals you’ll often find at Easter time. So if you’ve got a baby on the way–or know someone who does–you can stock up on stuff that was designed for Easter but would work equally well as a gift for a baby or new parent.
6. Stock Up On Stuffed Animals. Keeping with the kiddie theme, a great favor to give at a child’s birthday party is a stuffed animal. Right about now you should find plenty of stuffed animals on sale–especially if they are of the aforementioned chick, bunny and lamb persuasion.

My apologies to all of my subscribers who have been wondering where their Suddenly Frugal subscription has gone to. For some reason for the past week Feedburner had been a day late in sending my blog out.

When I publish the blog on a Monday or whichever day of the week it is, Feedburner doesn’t pick it up to email to my subscribers–you!–until 24 hours later. For example, today’s blog posting on newspaper coupons went live at 12:15 a.m. Eastern time (yes, I pre-write them so I’m not up at midnight working on my blog) yet when I logged on at 6:35 a.m., my emailed version of the blog was not there. It’s there on the Feedburner website, showing my feed is up to date, yet Feedburner, which is supposed to email the blog between 3 a.m. and 6 a.m. Eastern, isn’t doing its job.

So what’s the deal?

I’m posting this missive live at 7:04 a.m. Eastern on Monday, April 5th. I wonder when it will show up in your in box.

If anyone else is having this problem or has figured out a solution, please let me know. There is no actual live help at Feedburner (aka Google), and posting on the support forums does nothing either.