This past spring, I had a complete fit over the state of clutter in my home. At one point, I had a whole room filled with junk. And we needed this room for a new baby and not old crafts, newspaper clippings, boxes full of photos, unworn clothing, frames, posters, lamps, notebooks, books, electronics, dinnerware, CDs, videos, toys, old love letters, etc. We were motivated. What a perfect time to clean up, have a garage sale and make some cash, right?

We sorted and separated the items to keep and the items to sale. Some items are just to good for garage sale and might get a better price elsewhere. We had a unique dinnerware set that I checked on eBay first. Dinner plates were going for $10 a piece, and we had two complete sets. Hard to find collectibles would also be better for eBay. If we'd had any suits or other nice clothes that didn't fit anymore, I would have set them aside to take to a consignment shop. I usually try to sell books, videos, and CDs at the garage sale first. Then, whatever doesn't sell at home goes to Half Price Books for cash or traded for new books.

Even though there were signs and advertising, our garage sale didn't go over so well. Just not good traffic, bad weekend? Either way, we had priced all the items with little stickers. So before donating everything went to Goodwill, I added up the price on all the stickers to get a total deduction amount to use on taxes. I might just skip the garage sale altogether next time and go straight for a tax deduction and keep my weekend for myself. The deduction price ended up being a lot more than total sales for the day and lot less effort.