Successful Yard Sale Tips

Our family has moved 12 times in the last 22 years so we are familiar with yard sales. We are moving yet again so we had a sale this weekend. Here are the top three tips we have found to be successful.

1. Several clearly marked neon signs leading customers to the sale

We placed three ads.

The first, in the Newspaper, second, in the Penneysaver, and lastly on Craig’s List. Conducting a casual survey on how customers’ found our sale, overwhelmingly the answer was our great signage.

2. Clearly mark your sale items

You could spend a little money on fancy color coded stickers if you want, but masking tape is ultra cheap to use and it sticks well to the sale items. Use a medium-point Sharpie for clearly marking prices. Potential buyers should be able to easily read the price without having to pick the item up.

3. Have every item priced before the sale begins

The dealers will surely arrive early to the sale. Some of them count on your unpreparedness to get a heck of a deal on the best stuff you have to offer. If everything is pre-priced, you have an even playing field. If they want to buy a whole pile of stuff and want to know what the best I can do is, they get a 10% discount and we are both happy.

I consider our sale a success. We made some moolah to buy an electric clothes dryer for those crybaby teenagers, but most importantly, we got rid of the physical chaff that had built up in our home. Now we don’t need the kind people who help us on moving day to unnecessarily carry boxes of unneeded stuff into our new home.

I really do feel freer, lighter, and richer.

Kudos to Rean for saving my sanity on Friday.

Earth Day Musings 2009

There has been a beehive of activity around here with getting ready for the move. The moving sale is this weekend. Hopefully there are plenty of people who will love to be the second, third (or more!) owner of our no longer needed stuff. We are moving to a smaller house in several weeks. What fun. Not.

It’s funny the way I divorce myself from the current house to cotton myself to the new one.
We are challenging our family to simplify our lives. No dishwasher, no clothes dryer, no microwave. This is an experiment to see how long we can hold out without these modern day “necessities”. My kids are hoping we cave quickly.


Recently, and for an unrelated reason, I’ve switched our home to non toxic cleaners. After my daughter had a mild adverse reaction to the heavily perfumed Swiffer wet pads, I have decided to switch to more gentle and natural cleaners. The co-op order came in on Friday. Included were three delicious scents of Dr Bronners castile soap. There are (too) many recipes on the bottle, and more on the net; everything including shampoo, floor cleaner, laundry soap and so on.

Concerning the garden, I am still trying to figure out how we will move the compost pile. After four years of feeding the soil with our organic waste, the ground is abundantly rich and will make for an excellent start for the new herb garden.


The new *farmette* is smaller by half, five acres, but it has way more farm like amenities which Include a grain house, chicken coop, running stream, and a barn. After all the toil of moving our existence to the new location we can play around with becoming more self sustaining. Lots of learning and exciting adventures ahead, I suppose.
Anyway…Happy Earth Day.

Lost Highlights

My family enjoys watching Lost together on Wednesday nights. I popped the popcorn and poured the root beer. We were all settled in and ready to gain some insight into Mile's history. Spoiler alert-it was a pretty lame episode... save for the vintage Tupperware pitcher on the side table of Miles mom's bedroom.

It looks like this.



We used it last Sunday with dinner. My son in law said, "My mom had one like that when I was growing up; can I have it when you die?" True story.

Fish Tails and Spring Flowers Tablecloths

Fish Tail
Originally uploaded by turkeyfarmtreasures

We used these pinky vintage tablecloths on our resurrection dinner table. I took advantage of a sunny afternoon to photograph the latest additions to the ever growing population of linens that find their way into our home.

Vintage Spring Iris Tablecloth

Nothing much is blooming around here... except on my clothesline.


Thanks to one of my three sister's who is a junquer like me. She knows a pretty vintage cloth when she sees one.
She also knows I have this pattern (St. Regis by Springmaid, Iris) in the pink colorway. She knows it stands to reason I would want one in blue also.
She's right. It's absolutely glorious!

Olympia sm9 Typewriter

Everything old is new again.
Three bucks for the typewriter at Goodwill. Fourteen bucks for the ribbon on Ebay.
I so love retro things that are actually useful.

Home Energy Conservation

Many buzzwords are tossed around today: sustainability, green living, no impact, carbon footprint, energy conservation, Energy Star, LEED, reduce, reuse, recycle and so on.
They may mean different things to different people in terms of priority and commitment.

We are into stewardship. In our humble opinion, energy conservation is at the very foundation of green and frugal living.

Energy that does not have to be generated has no emissions, no pollutants, no transportation costs, and no foreign oil dependency.

Some of the techniques we employ can be accomplished with little or no monetary investment. Other methods require some substantial investment of time and or money; and professional services may be necessary.
Everything has a payback, be it short or long term, but when you consider it AN INVESTMENT it will help justify the cost.