How to Display Clothing at a Garage Sale: 8 Simple Tips

A garage sale can be a great way to declutter the house and bring in a few bucks. Some garage sales and yard sales may make $100 or less, but others can make more, and you will clear out the spare room or the attic without having to bag everything and take it to the charity shop. It is an especially good way to get rid of old or unwanted clothing.

Using the following tips, you can create an attractive, practical garage sale or yard sale that gives you the best chance of clearing out your wardrobes and making some extra money.

The 8 Tips How to Display Clothing at a Garage Sale

1. Clean Everything First

Before you even start to get out clothes hangers and rails, you should wash everything you are considering selling. Buyers will be put off by stains and they won’t want to buy anything that looks like it might need washing, even though most people will wash the clothes again when they get home.

If, while washing, you find anything that is badly stained or damaged, throw it out or find some way to upcycle the item rather than trying to sell it. Even if somebody isn’t interested in the stained item, it may put them off buying other items because they won’t trust that the clothes are clean.

You should also consider ironing clothes that need it. The newer and fresher the clothes look, the greater your chance of successfully selling them.

2. Use Clothes Hangers

Clothes hangers are the best way to display clothes. If you have any in the attic or anywhere in the house, get them out and ensure that they are clean and fully serviceable. If you don’t have your own, ask friends and family if you can borrow any, or look online to see if you can pick up some cheap clothes hanging rails.

You want ones that are open at the front so that people can see them, and you need enough to be able to easily display all the clothes you’re selling. You don’t want to pack too many clothes on a single hanging rail.

Alternatively, you can use items like shower rails or tension rails and attach these to walls or securely rest either end on items. Do make sure the rails are clean, though, because any mess will transfer from the rail to the clothes and put buyers off.

3. Use a Clothing Rack

If you have a clothing rack, you can use this instead. These have the advantage that they are designed for the purpose, and they usually enable you to hang the clothes away from the floor so that they aren’t being draped in the mud and dust on the ground.

4. Use a Clothesline

If you are having a yard sale or if you can attach a line inside your garage, hang a clothesline. You can then put clothes on hangers and hang them from the line. A clothesline is designed to hold clothes, and adding the weight of multiple hangers means it might droop in the middle, so you will need to ensure that it is secured tightly.

You can get clothesline ratchets that fit to the line and allow you to tighten while it is in place, and this can help prevent clothes from draping on the ground.

5. Neatly Folded Piles

If you don’t have hangers or you have too many clothes to fit the clothesline and clothes rails, you can put them in piles. Ensure the clothes are folded neatly, group them according to gender, size, color, or type of clothing, and create a neatly stacked pile.

The pile will get knocked over and left untidy throughout the day, which means that you will have to spend some time refolding clothes and restacking piles, but this can be a good way of displaying a lot of clothing items in a relatively small space.

6. Group Similar Items

Grouping clothing will help your garage sale visitors find what they are most interested in. You can group according to gender, age of the wearer, type of clothes, or even color, but do make sure you have some method and that there is some order to the piles or racks of clothing you have for sale.

7. Rearrange as Items Sell

With any luck, your clothes will sell over the course of the day, and as items do sell, you want to ensure that your display continues to look attractive and neat. Take the time to walk around and fill in any gaps, where possible. This might mean spreading items out a little more as the day progresses or, if you have additional items you want to sell, you can bring these out to display as your original items sell.

8. Price It Appropriately

People head to garage sales either for really unique items that they can’t find anywhere else or for bargains so cheap that they wouldn’t be able to get them at thrift stores or dollar stores. This means that you are going to have to price items on the low side, and you should be prepared to barter.

You can check the price of similar items being sold online, but if you do price items too high, you will find that they just don’t sell. And, if the price is really too high, most browsers won’t even consider making an offer to try and strike a deal.

Conclusion

Garage sales can be a great way to free up space while making a bit of extra cash on old and unused items. If you have piles of clothes that you no longer wear but that somebody else might love, hold a garage sale.

Make sure you have enough stuff to justify a sale, advertise it well in your local area, and then set out your items so that they are easy to browse and grab attention. Ideally, clothes should be hung on rails, hangers, or clotheslines, and they should be washed and ironed before being put on display to enhance their chances of selling.

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