~ Garage Sale Shopping ~

I'm diving into the world of blogging full force and participating in my first ever "link party!"
I am linking up over at We Are That Family for WFMW - "Works For Me Wednesday"

Over the last couple of months I have really got into garage saling. I have always liked garage sales, I just either never had the time or kind of never thought about them much. Now... when I see a sign... I have to stop! Or at least do a slow drive by to check it out! (I have 2 kids you know! And if they are with it better be a good one for me to drag both of them out of the car!)

I think the problem I had with garage sales was I never knew where to find them. I mean do people just go driving around looking for signs? Do you look in the paper to find people who have put out an ad telling you about their sale? I guess I didn't (and still don't) know the TRUE secrets of a mad garage saler! But after doing a little thinking and research of my own... this is the plan or routine that I have come up with... hence, it Works For Me...

* I first start out by going onto Craigslist - under my state of course.

* Once I'm on Craigslist I click on garage sales and then refine my search at the top of the page. This is where I will type in my city or any surrounding city I may want to go garage saling in.

* After it pulls up all the garage sales in my city I will click on the ones that sound good and put together a list of the sales I want to go to.

* Once I have put together my list, I will quickly go through and sort them out by what time and days they are open.
For example: All the ones that open Thursday at 8:00am go in one column and all the ones that open Thursday at 9:00am go in another and so on and so forth.
I do this because I like to go first thing in the morning!

* After my list is sorted out by time I head over to mapquest and enter in the first address I would like to go to. (you all know how mapquests works)

* However here's the trick - after I have entered my first address, I will continue to enter in all the addresses to the garage sales I want to go to that day!
Mapquest will then start giving you driving directions from one sale to the next.
The neat thing about their site is that they have a tool at the bottom where you can choose to move an address up or move an address down on the list. That way you can effectively map out your driving route to the next closest sale!



* And there ya' have it! It takes about 20 minutes or so, but once you are done you will have your handy dandy mapquest directions and you can drive straight from one garage sale to the next. That is of course if you don't stop for other signs you see along the way! Haha, yeah right!



Not the most genius or inventive thing... but it works for me!
I hope this helps someone else get a time effective and organized grip on garage saling! - Good Luck!

I'll post pictures later tomorrow night or Friday and show you any goodies I may have found! Wish me luck!

P.S. - I hope you like the new addition of the header to Appleberry's Attic! I thought the red barn scene was oh so cute and the black and white pictures down the side are a great way for me to show of my pride and joys! :)

P.P.S - See, I told you we have been super busy lately! This is how all 3 boys in my house fell asleep last night....