Granted, they weren’t fancy, but they were double-sided, wind-proof, easy to spot from the road and nearly free.  In other words, the perfect garage sale traffic grabbers.  Want to make one?  Here are the basic steps…

Step 1: Grab a pack of fourescent paper (I found mine for a few bucks at WalMart)

Step 2: Print and cut out the elements of the garage sale sign printable.   You can find it at the end of this post.  You may want to add your street address to the arrows with a black sharpie (I smudged our address out of these pictures – that’s why the arrows look weird).

Step 3: Find a tall, narrow box of some kind (I used a priority mail box that my son had colored, a few other Sam’s Club grocery boxes I had in my pantry).  Add a few heavy items to the bottom of the box to weigh it down and prevent it from tipping in the wind.  I used landscaping bricks because we had a few stashed in the garage but soup cans or hand weights would work too.

Step 4: Use duct tape to seal the top of the box and attach the signs to the front and back of the box (be sure the arrows point the same direction).

That’s it.  See?  I told you they were easy.  Now just drop one at each of the intersections leading up to your house and you’ll be all set to make the big bucks.  Doesn’t that beat spending $20 on tiny plastic signs?  I thought so too.  Happy garage sale-ing!  Just thought I’d pass it on.

Download: Garage Sale Sign

I’ve used this trick for years now.  I came up with it when I had three kids under three and was desperate for a way to simplify the getting-out-the-door process.  Since the car seat goes everywhere the baby goes this simple solution has allowed me to make quick runs to the store or to pick up the big kids from activities without lugging a diaper bag all the time.

I’ve got a diaper and a small ziploc bag of wipes tucked into my toddler’s car seat lining too.  Granted, his seat stays in the car but my car is never far away so it’s a a great backup for diapering emergencies.  The same trick worked for my daughter when she was potty training too.  You moms that have been through the potty training process know how frustrating it is when your kids have accidents away from home.  The clean pair of underwear, wipes and pull-up that I used to keep in the lining of her booster seat saved me from many messy situations.  No matter where we were or how long we were away from home, I always knew I had a backup available.

It’s a simple idea that has saved me from tons of trouble.  If you’re a mom of little ones you should definitely give this simple trick a try.  Just thought I’d pass it on.

For example, I just did an overhaul of my cluttered garage shelves.  If I were on an organizing show they would probably make me go through a very deliberate (and time consuming) process such as…take everything off the shelves, purge the excess, divide up the remaining stuff into clear categories, make spiffy new labels for the shelves, measure the shelves to determine where everything should go, and then finally place all the items in their assigned locations.  Well, my little guy only naps for an hour at a time so, unlike the makeover shows, I needed a fix that would be faster and more flexible.  My solution?  Use a dry erase marker to create temporary labels.

I still went through the basic steps.  I scanned the shelves and moved or pitched anything that didn’t seem to fit in (like the cordless drill stashed on the bottom shelf or the bike pump I found behind the pasta).  Then I used my dry erase marker to make quick category labels on the shelves.  Once I started moving things around, I realized that my paper towels were a little too tall to fit on the low shelf I originally planned for them so I erased that label and reassigned them to a higher one.  I did the same thing with my 25lb flour sacks.  They were too big to fit with the other food storage items so I added them to the empty side of the cleaning supplies shelf and then wrote a quick label beneath them.  You could call it a trial and error (aka lazy) form of organizing, but I find it be much faster.  All in all, the entire project took me about 25 minutes and that includes the time it took me to take the random stuff (like the drill and the bike pump) back to their correct spots in the house.

You might ask, “Now that you’ve got your system all worked out, did you go spend hours creating beautiful, weather-proof, permanent labels?  Isn’t that what organized people do?”  To which I would answer, “Are you kidding?  I had 35 more minutes of kid nap time to kill so I spent it doing important stuff like checking my email and browsing blogs.”  The simple fact is, the garage shelves aren’t a high priority and their contents change frequently so it seems kind of silly to create permanent labels.  Rather, I left up the dry erase labels as a solid, temporary fix.  They’re clear enough for my family to follow and low-maintenance enough for me to rearrange and adjust as I see fit.

I often do the same thing with my organizing bins.  For example, I’ve got most of my kid’s old clothes in these blue rubbermaid bins (I’ve got over 20 of them).  I have a nice plastic-coated label on the front which is great because they look really neat and organized when they’re stacked in my basement.  However, functionally, having a label on only one side of the box isn’t terribly helpful.  After all, sometimes the boxes need to be stacked sideways, sometimes they don’t get put away correctly so the label faces the back, and sometimes I’ve got several out at a time and I don’t want to constantly flip them around to figure out what’s inside.

To solve the problem, I grab my dry erase marker and label the top, back and sides of the box.  It’s not a pretty fix, but since no one else ever sees the other sides of the box I don’t really care about aesthetics.  Plus, once we’re done having kids and it’s time to get rid of all the clothes I can easily wipe off the labels and repurpose the bins for something else (FYI – a lysol wipe works well if the ink is stubborn).  It’s a simple organizing solution that saves me time and trouble.  Just thought I’d pass it on.

To help my car survive the many mini-meals, I came up with this easy solution. I removed the label from an empty Crystal Light tube and stuffed it full of plastic grocery sacks. Whenever I start to see the mess accumulating or when I’m getting gas and have a trash can handy, I just reach under the driver’s seat and grab a sack from the tube. I pass it back to the kids and they dig around the car for any potential trash. The tube can hold around 10 sacks, so I rarely have to worry about refilling it. As a bonus, they also come in handy for stops at the mailbox and trips home from the pool in the summer.

To help prevent the tube from rolling around, I made another tube for napkins/paper towels and used two large rubber bands to hold them together. The rubber bands grip the carpet a little and help keep the tubes right under my seat. I’m sure there are tons of other ways you could use them as well, loose change, coloring pages & crayons, wet wipes, etc. It’s a simple, free, solution that has tons of potential. Just thought I’d pass it on.