Some people are such skinflints!

lucy*locket

durham_girl wrote: »

I've never been to a jumble sale, thay never have any on around here but yeah, if it's for charity I don't think I would haggle.

On another note, does anyone know if it takes much organising to hold a jumble sale?

I organised jumble sales at my DD and DS primary school, did them for about 4 years, twice a year, I loved it. There was small team of about 12 of us, called ourselves the Jumblies. We used the school hall, asked for donations from parents for several weeks beforehand, sorted everything the night before (took about 4 hours), jumble 10am-12pm, clearing took around an hour afterwards. We picked out anything decent left and took it to the charity shop (they don't like receiving jumble but some stuff was too good just to dump), and the rest of the leftover stuff we divided up between us and took it to the dump, clothes into the recycle bin of course.

You need a venue, a good team ( 10-12 should do it plus some willing volunteers to help clear up at the end), advertising TWO weeks beforehand and lots of posters around locally. Decide what charity/organisation you want to support and get in touch with them, they should be able to generate more donations from their supporters.

Tips:
Don't have too many volunteers to sort the night before, you need a small band of helpers.

Be prepared for bags of dirty tat, and we found a (used) battery operated device in one bag IYKWIM:eek:

Don't bother with refreshments for the customers (we hardly sold any cups of tea) but make sure someone looks after the staff:D

Make sure your team knows rough prices, but remember people don't expect to pay much.

Make sure you have more change than you think you'll need, and keep it in a safe place (bumbags are good for the helpers)

One of the perks for the helpers is getting the pick of stuff when sorting, I don't have a problem with this, if they're giving their time freely then why shouldn't they get first dibs?? As long as they pay for it all (get someone else to price it up for them), what does it matter if they buy it or someone else?

We used to make around £300 for school funds so worth doing and fun too.

HTH

fizz26

Morning all
My mum works in a charity shop 3 days a week, and too gets brand new stuff in with the tags still on, they mark the stuff a 3rd of the price and people ask for it cheaper than its marked at, My mum always reminds them politely of course its for charity.:o

Ive put stuff on eBay at 99p and been asked if i would reduce it if it doesn't sell, I just relist it and pray it goes for more:p

But people are really tight as a nats %&*$.
My uncle for 1 he goes through ebay and puts the 99p bids on a load of stuff and leaves it at that
He does win thing too doing just that then resells it on a different account but what can you do?!!

durham_girl

Thanks for all your tips and advice guys, I might just give it a go! There's a big hall in the middle of town that various organisations rent out, so I'm going to look into how much it costs etc and sorting out some volunteers