Organizing My Garage Sale Closet in Just Over an Hour

Before

Since I started my weekly simple homemaking plan the first week of 2012, I’ve been working diligently to purge unused items from the house.  As I come across something we no longer use I toss it into a box in the hall closet. Last week I had to kick the vacuum out of the closet because it was so full!  I realized it was time to put organizing the garage sale closet on my homemaking plan.

Yesterday afternoon, little Turkey and I pulled all the boxes and bags of sale items into the living room. (5 minutes because we had fun with it and had to clean up a few spills) They had been stuffed haphazardly in such a way that would make setting up for a garage sale difficult and time consuming.

My first goal was simply to sort like items, so I brought in 4 spare laundry baskets and started sorting. 

Considering which items I expected there to be more of I had: 

• One basket for household items, decor and misc.
• One basket for toys
• One basket for boys clothes
• One basket for girls clothes

As I emptied tubs, boxes and bins I used them for other categories or overflow.  It only took 10 minutes to sort through everything! I took the next 10 minutes to sort through the household misc. basket further and to pack the boxes more compactly.

Next, I tackled the 3 baskets and 2 boxes of clothes.  There was an overwhelming amount of kids’ clothes. My mom had sent me quite a few clothes that she had picked up inexpensively. We didn’t use them so she wanted me to sell them instead. First I stacked the girls clothes by size.  Then I folded and stacked them by season/type.  Lastly I put the smaller sizes/stacks into sacks, and boxed the rest up with plastic sacks as dividers.  The girls clothes took about 15 minutes.

Then I repeated the process with the boys clothes.  They took about 20 minutes partially because little Turkey was ready for some attention.  5 more minutes to pull them all back to the closet and now it looks like this.  Just enough room for the vacuum too!

From start to finish – while watching TV and keeping little Turkey entertained – took about an hour and 5 mins!  In another 3 or 4 weeks when we have our sale, I’ll be able to pull those boxes out and set them right on the tables knowing exactly which items they hold.
Much better don’t you think? I quite enjoyed my hour to watch TV! (the same reason as I enjoy doing laundry) Only 1 task left on this week’s homemaking plan.  Hmmm what tasks should I pick to work on next week?

You may also be interested in my How to Have a Successful Garage Sale series.  The first two posts: Preparing for Your Sale and Advertising were posted this week. Be sure to check back on Tuesday when I’ll be posting on How to Set Everything Up to Optimize Your Sale.