There are many factors you’ll need to consider when choosing the location of your sale. For one thing, you’ll need plenty of space for your items. You’ll need room for lots of parking. Depending on the weather, you may need a place that provides shelter – check the forecast! If you live in a rural or hard-to-find area, consider having your sale at someone else’s house: 105 Sullivan Street is likely to be a lot easier to find than 1343 County Road 115 or Route 2, Box 70. The same holds true if you live in a not-so-savory part of town. People tend to gravitate toward sales in the more “ritzy” neighborhoods because they automatically assume that wealthy people = good quality merchandise. So if your house is one step away from the projects, or an otherwise questionable neighborhood, seek out a better place to hold your sale.
If you don’t have any friends who are willing to donate their yard space for a day, you may be able to use (or rent for a nominal fee) the parking lot or a spare room in your church. Who knows, while asking around you might even spur a church-wide sale! Other reasons to change location include neighborhood regulations; some places have restrictions or require permits, so find out before you commit to holding the sale in a certain spot.
Timing is everything.
When you hold your sale can be just as important as where. Again, look at the forecast … although it’s not always 100% accurate, it can still give you a general idea of when the weather will be cooperative. Late spring or early summer are great times – not as rainy as early spring, and not as blistering hot as mid-summer. Have your sale on a weekend, preferably a Saturday, but not on a holiday weekend: people are likely to either be out of town or busy entertaining visitors. Consider when most people get paid, and plan accordingly. If you know that the widget factory is your town’s largest employer, and that they pay on the first and fifteenth of every month, it might be a good idea to plan your sale for as close to payday as possible (if they’re getting paid on Thursday the fifteenth, for example, then Saturday the seventeenth is prime sale time).