When you're garage sale shopping.....

**PrairieRose** · 08-25-2006, 09:10 AM

Do you make out a detailed route by the newspaper or just drive around in your area looking for sales? I always have to make out a route b/c even though there may be 20 sales or so in the next town over, there are never enough to just drive around and go to. Now if I lived in a city I would love to do that and would every Saturday morning. Need to add making out my route to my list of things to do today.

**MarshHen** · 08-25-2006, 10:17 AM

I do plan out my route cause like you, I live in a small community and the sales are spread out. With the gas prices as high as they are, I want to save my $$ for the yard-sale goodies.

**Katybird** · 08-25-2006, 10:35 AM

Our newspaper divides the sales by areas of town so we just take the paper and go to the ones in one area before moving on to another area and by the division in the paper I can easily see the areas that I don't want or need to go to.

**MarshHen** · 08-25-2006, 11:15 AM

Originally Posted by Katybird

Our newspaper divides the sales by areas of town so we just take the paper and go to the ones in one area before moving on to another area and by the division in the paper I can easily see the areas that I don't want or need to go to.

Wow, that's cool. We only have our little local paper that comes out every Thursday. If we want to know what sales are going on in Brunswick and the islands (the best sales) I either have to buy a Brunswick paper or I can go online and check it out.

**QuilterMom** · 08-25-2006, 01:00 PM

I plan a route. Actually, I tend to only attend community sales where I can just park and walk the neighborhood or I go to church rummage sales. Gas is too expensive for me to drive from small sale to small sale.

**Laurie in Bradenton** · 08-25-2006, 05:41 PM

I'm like quilter mom. I'd pick either a community sale (which we have tons of) or a flea market. Which we also have alot of.
We head off early with our wheel cart in tow and try to be finished up by noon as most sales close up around that time. Also armed with my little book of lists.

Laurie in Bradenton

**Goodwin17** · 08-25-2006, 10:10 PM

We usually cruise our subdivision first for sales. We typically then head down the major highway, and there are usually signs in the medians. There are so many subdivisions, you really just drive down the road and come up on tons. We usually head toward the flea market too, although we don't buy a lot.

**frugalnana** · 08-26-2006, 04:25 PM

Usually my mom scans the paper and Advertiser and we pick the best day (friday or saturday) and then I look it over and plan my route. Since we usually stop at the bakery and farmers market on our route. We like the community sales and Rummage sales the best.

**miss_thrifty** · 08-26-2006, 05:38 PM

make a scan of the off the phone book of the map. and get paper friday nite, number it all out, so I dont double back.

**mustang80** · 08-26-2006, 06:01 PM

Definitely map them out. You can hit more sales in one neighborhood that way. We take our map with us too, but Mapquest is very helpful if you're not sure where a yard sale is.

**Michelle68** · 08-26-2006, 06:41 PM

When I garage sale shop I just basically drive around our neighborhood and the others around us. (There's around 8 different subdivisions in a 2 mile radius around us, so there's usually quite a few garage sales going on in our area.) Also, I usually hoard the quarters, dimes and nickels my DH brings home on the evenings he works from his tips. By Saturday that will add up to $5-$10. That's my "garage-sale money". I'm pretty good about staying within my budget because that's all I carry with me, but if we find a REALLY good deal which takes us over and beyond that (which is quite rare) we have to drive to the bank and withdrawal the money. Some weekends I spend the entire amount of garage-sale change I'm carrying, some weekends I don't, but that just leaves me more for the next weekend.

--Michelle