Yard Sales. The Pros and Cons from moms Perspective.
This post is as always my opinion. I have looked at several resources and also listened to and watched countless documentaries and books on this subject. If something sounds familiar I apologies but these are to my very best knowledge my own words mixed with true statements and facts. No AI was used on this and nor will I ever be using AI for anything. Thank you.
Chapter 1- What are Yard Sales, and how are they different from thrifting and other sales?
We all know what yard sales are, but if for some reason you have never been in an area that does any; simply put a yard sale is the idea of selling your old or unused household items like clothes, kids gear, jewelry, kitchen appliances and much much more for a small profit.
For me in my house, I sell what is still good but no longer serves a purpose in my life or house, like we sold air fryers that we thought would work out but ended up not being big enough for our family of 5. Currently we are working on clearing out our storage shed (another video topic perhaps 🤔) to save the amount of the storage rent every month, about $300, by utilizing yard sales and things like Facebook market. So far this year I have made over $100 in yard sales, which is amazing. Yard sales also offer “discount prices” so for example I sell a lot of things for 50 cents although I do have things at or around “full price” when it comes to things that are essentially new or never used. Like currently we have a soft dog kennel/carrier that was bought for our senior dog before she passed. We never used it, so I'm selling it over 50% off of its original price at $35. Yeah, that's not selling yet 🙄 but we will get there.
That's a big difference between yard sales and thrift stores' prices.
At a yard sale it's what the owners still value their things at, versus an employee looking through a box of donations and pricing with the internet. Many thrift stores are becoming unattractive to most because their prices are steadily increasing. Due to rent of the space and just general upkeep and of course paying their workers (hopefully) a fair wage. A creator that I love just recently posted that any handmade gift from her was made unethical because she has forgotten to eat, drink water, take breaks etcetera. And let me tell you when you look at that list, my yard sales are very unethical 😆 but I do pay my workers a fair price (my kids help me and get $5 flat fee plus whatever they get from their items selling) so sometimes after that my yard sales don't make a whole bunch but let me tell you when they do everyone gets a cut. A thrift store has to pay their overhead and our yard sales are usually selling off home surplus if you look at it. One of these days during the summer months I plan on letting my little one set up a lemonade stand during the yard sale, to sell lemonade and cold water bottles. Why? Because that whimsy of childhood is not lost on me. I tried, in vain, to do a lemonade stand when I was a kid. My biggest difference from my kids is that I lived in the middle of nowhere and they live in a city. Also, there selling to be able to buy from the elote man, but we will get to that more in the community section.
Chapter 2- Pros and Cons with Eco Rammifications.
The biggest pro I see is that stuff stays out of landfills for the moment. As for the con, it's still consumerism just repacked and given sparkles of protest. Protest how? You know the whole “vote with your dollar” deal? I try to do my best to vote with my dollar and show brands what I want versus what I don't want. What I want: a livable world for my children and many generations to come. What I don't need: someone to be treated poorly because I wanted that cute top. So what do I do? I know that item may already exist in someone's closet that has been gathering dust for 10 years and they may happen to put it in their yard sale in a week. As I touched on, I yard sale a lot of things that are no longer usable in my house but still very good and not at the end of their lifespan yet like coming up I'll have kindergarten sized school uniforms in my sale because my little one is no longer a size 10 but now a size 12 in most brands of uniform clothing (if you don't know let me tell you they are all different and to please buy in person to try stuff on) and I guarantee you, i’ll be selling them under $2 a piece. Why so low? Because in my mind and area, that is my price point. My general price is as low as 10c for my big box of books (free if you just ask) all the way up to that current high priced item (dog bed/kennel) at $35. In the past I've sold gently used baby equipment for $50, and let me tell you that was a nice sale that I was surprised I got.
I've mentioned in my declutter scale It goes consignment and then sale. Well, there are more steps: re-home inside home, offer to friends, consignment, yard sale and last donation. I have added Reselling on whatever app I have luck on recently. I have of course the usual Facebook market, but I am also on Vinted and Depop. I'm just starting my journey on those so I'll have to do a check in later for those. I also started to advertise my yard sales on Facebook Market and also whatever close by Yard Sale Groups, I need more data to let you know how those go since I've only done one sale with them so far.
The big downside is the time it takes does not equal the money received and sometimes you can't make back your start up “costs” like recently I bought a new 10x10 cover (my current/last one is broken but still usable) and a clothing rack, both are meant to elevate and make the yard sale go better and get more people stopping. But, the cost of that was $80 at least so that cost is something that likely will take a sale or two to redo but more likely longer since my main funds go straight into my home cost. An example of the day not equaling the cost of time was about 2 months ago (yes my 2026 season did me dirty so far) 😑 I had gotten up with real bad aches and pains but I had already advertised this sale as happening so the show had to go on. I was set up completely by 9am and I finally got up to start taking things down by 3pm which is huge because I usually get up by 630am at the latest and I stay set up till 5pm that’s a big chunk of time so for me to call it like that, it was a “bad day.” I also only made about $2 for that day. I think that just went into my little one's piggy bank in the end.
On the flip side; having already said I usually stay set up for at least 10 hours, the most I've made in one day has been just shy of $100 in the 2025 season. That felt great and I was able to get a large chunk of things gone, plus pay my helpers well. I have looked into actually transitioning my sales to a swap meet near me but the only bad thing about doing that would be that I don't drive and I would be dependent on someone helping me get there and setting up and all. Honestly, that may be something for the future.
Are yard sales really eco friendly you may ask, since i've only given you my experience and nothing peer reviewed, lets look.
I found an alarming statistic that 2 out of every 10 items actually get bought once donated to a thrift store or other donations based stop.
That's alarming.
What's more alarming is there is a clothing pile that is seen from space with donated clothing in the Atacama Desert in Northern Chile. If you haven't seen it, I'll put an image here.
Very simple to fact check as you can see. I just Googled it.
I don't know how you haven't seen it. I feel like this image is as impactful as the images of our turtle friend with the straw in it’s nose.
This image has been used the same way as the turtle too, shifting the blame from fast fashion to the consumer who may or may not be buying a new wardrobe every season.
How can they do that? I mentioned fast fashion, because it all is these days and because of that it's relatively cheap. It's mostly cheap because the people who make it don't receive decent compensation or any at all in some cases for their labor. When I was watching something on fast fashion being bad they showed images of child workers with all the big brands. Children that aren't much older or younger than mine, enough images that made my children cry. They laugh when Hetty from Ghosts makes jokes of child labor but they cry to find out it's really happening in this day and age. Children should be playing, not having to work. But if you have read Cobalt Red by Siddharth Kara you will know how prevalent child labor is and how second nature it is to industry, the same industries that claim they have no child labor. Heck, I even saw in a DW Planet A documentary there are children working in mass tomato farms in Europe. The impact of the highly consumerist goods we have these days is much more than just pain in the wallet, for some it's true pain along with the only way to make any income at all.
When we circle back to the yard sales with these new parameters of knowledge we see that more than just 2 of every 10 items are being reused, much more in my community for sure as I see the clothing I've sold walking down my street on others. It feels great to see those items live on, I can only hope the same is being done for the electronics I sell too. We have all seen that news story about garbage trucks and also recycling trucks catching on fire because of (mostly) batteries. That's another good reason to read Cobalt Red to find out how damaging that is, the process of throwing away the batteries into the wrong receptacle. In the case of being more Eco Friendly, please take those extra few minutes to find out where a proper drop off point is for all hazardous materials you may be disposing of, yes; batteries are hazardous not just paints and chemicals. Many municipalities offer disposal sites for free or a low price so it's worth checking them out. Try to prevent an actual dumpster fire 🔥 as well as your can.
Chapter 3- Frugality.
“I have to go to the store before I run out of money!” This is a phrase I've heard and uttered much too often, right next to “why can't schools provide the uniforms they require for the year?” Yes, this year along with the past 10 school years I have dealt with school uniforms. I never had uniforms growing up and as someone who longed for her letter to Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, I wrote the argument for uniforms when prompted more than once. But now as a low income adult with two children requiring uniforms, well, I feel different.
Uniforms are ridiculously expensive so whenever I can, I buy the frugal option. I consign when I can, we found a skirt for this upcoming school year before the end of the previous school year for $2.50. You better believe I spent my $8 store credit on that (along with a Go-Go Fashion doll because Big Hero 6 is one of my little one’s favorite). I try my hardest to get my children's uniforms on sale, but the ones that go on sale most often are the kinds my kids don't like, or the ones that aren't skorts and they require extra clothing like shorts underneath, because little girls can play too. I am a fierce Girl Mom and my kids will get as equal of an opportunity as the rest of them and if that means doing the monkey bars at recess then you best bet they went to school with that Skort Skirt to do so. The regular price of a skirt with a skort has changed over the past 10 years. When my oldest was in kindergarten I was able to snag her up skirts for $5 a piece (still expensive back then) and now as my youngest is entering into 1st Grade I paid $15 for one skirt. I also paid $15 for a full uniform dress that has a “Polo Top” but no Skort. So I will in fact be getting a pack of what's been referred to as “Bicycle Shorts” for what will probably be at least $10 for a pack of 2 or 3, but I don't have to worry about 1 day of top/skirt scenario so that's good right? Right.
My oldest at one point in time went to a charter school, well she actually went to two different ones but only one required uniforms. This school was a different uniform than we had been used to, I had long since sold her small uniforms and got welcomed into the world of Uniforms With Embroidered Logos or Crests. For a school that had been around more than 30 years they had chosen a mom and pop store (yay right) that couldn't do the embroidery fast enough for the school year and charged an extra $10 just for the embroidery, if you were lucky you had a “standard size child” and could buy the stock the school had but my child is a mirror image of me and likes some wiggle in her cloths so we spent around $25 a top for at least 5 tops to start the school year, $125 for just tops. My oldest by this point enjoyed pants over skirts (wonderful) and we ended up finding name brand Dickies on sale via regular uniform stores (like the ones I got my work scrubs from) so we were able to get her 5 pairs of pants under the $125 price of the tops. Discount or not, those 4 years of that school put me under much more stress than any other year (2020 included) with the price of school things.
Yard sales and other types of second hand sales became my lifeline or even my saving grace of getting any type of reprieve. So when I started to yard sale those pieces that were now too small for my big kid and not needed for another few years for my little kid, I started selling those pieces for $2 a piece, now they go for $0.50-$1 on a good day. I don't fight for a super high price, I know my neighbors are in similar positions to me so why should I try to “rip off” anyone. Yes, I've been told my $0.50 clothing piece was a rip off one time, or a few more times than one. As I write this section, I just spent my budgeted $20 on said uniform dress for $15 and got my little one a “treat” with her change. I am also waiting for my Golden Ticket to be called for school supplies this week. My youngest qualified through my job (something I have had to do more than I would like to admit) for a backpack and some coveted back to school Gift Cards for things that I was unable to find at any yard sales so far this year.
In the end, yard sales save so much.
Time, Energy, Money and Sanity. If we are living in a cycle then we should be able to prepare for the cycle. In the coming months I will be doing more yard sales, the weather had me down during our “monsoon season” so I wasn’t able to do any sales during the summer or the beginning of the school year. I will be keeping my eyes open during these months for my own To Buy List items but I will hopefully be filling many peoples own To Buy List and hopefully for cheaper than a certain big time shop to home place (wink wink).
I’d love to know about your perspective and thoughts on yard sales; do they help, do they hinder, do they make any difference in the items that end up getting sent to the landfill? I wanted to put another part onto this blog but this took me about 2-3 months to actually write and edit, so another part to come. I also linked my YouTube Video for this post way at the top where I give other examples and tried not to read this blog verbatim while filming, so I hope you give that a little watch and like.
Thanks for reading. I’ll see you in the next one.
