Tips help during garage sale season

Dear Heloise: Your hint for using colored dots at garage sales is good. I have done this and have had good success. After marking items with the various colors, I took 8-by-10-inch cardboard sheets and put the dots on with corresponding prices, and then placed the sheets at various locations (tables and walls) around the garage. This minimized the price questions. And I received many compliments about the arrangement. P. Guidry, Orange, Calif.

It does make labeling and pricing everything a snap! Thanks for reminding us about this hint. Below are some favorite yard- or garage-sale hints:

•How you display garage-sale items is a key to sales. Stores spend time arranging and displaying goods, so take time to do this for your garage sale. If things are attractively placed and organized, you will sell more.

•Price every item! Although this might seem daunting, it will save you time during a busy sale. You will sell more because people can see the price and decide immediately if they want to buy or bargain.

•When planning a garage sale, after you decide on the date, also choose a rain date, just in case of unexpected bad weather. Put this information on your sign or in the ad for the sale.

•When you are organizing a garage sale, be sure to declutter the garage or area you are using. Clear out items not needed and include them in the sale to make extra cash. Heloise

Dear Heloise: When my children were small, we traveled a lot to visit family. We would stop at fast-food places, get our food and keep rolling. Eating out of a bag was not easy for the children or me. I started saving the large foam trays that meat comes on (be sure to wash well or cover with napkins), and we would put them in our laps. We were able to spread out our sandwich and fries without spilling them or getting sauce on our clothes. Hope this helps someone traveling with small children. D’Aun Meherg, Deatsville, Ala.

Dear Heloise: I find that the types of pill bottles that require you to line up two triangles to open them can be frustrating, in that the molded-in triangles are sometimes hard to see. What I do is color in the triangles with a permanent marker to make lining them up much easier. Although plain black is helpful enough, this method could be also extended to color-coding the triangles for different contents to make locating specific medication even speedier. A Reader, via e-mail

SBlt Send a money-saving or timesaving hint to Heloise, P.O. Box 795000, San Antonio, TX 78279-5000, or you can fax it to (210) HELOISE or e-mail it to Heloise@Heloise.com.

King Features Syndicate