You think a garage sale will give your seller a focus to get rid of clutter, but what it really does is double your seller's responsibilities in areas they may not be good at like advertising, marketing, merchandising, and more. If they were good at all that, they wouldn't need you so much, would they? They could sell their own home.

Most clutter can be simply thrown away, so the problem is effort. To get the home ready for market, you are going to need all your seller's limited energy and enthusiasm to simply get the house clean and clear of clutter, not to mention any make-ready or repairs that need to be done.

If you've ever cleaned out a closet, found that old box of pictures, baby shoes, or high school albums, and unwittingly frittered away the rest of the day poring over old times instead of ruthlessly cleaning and sorting, it's a sure bet your seller will do the same.

For some reason, selling things seems a little more final than giving them away. Your seller can't help but luxuriate in some time-consuming angst over their personal clutter.

That garage sale scheduled for two weeks away might not happen for two months as your sellers agonize over what to keep and what to sell and for how much. What is the least they will take for that item?

Tick, tock, tick, tock.

It will quickly dawn on the seller that s/he has to merchandise the items, which includes pricing and advertising. This raises a Hydra's head of questions. How do you make junk look good? Who's got enough card tables to group all the breakables into vignettes? How do you price items for sale?

To have a good garage sale requires a lot of inventory, which means your seller could bring other neighbors into the sale. This could delay things further as they have to get ready, too, and then their inventory has to be merchandised.

If your seller has turned over the marketing of his/her home to you, why would they want to spend their time marketing their own cast-offs?

The seller has to select a weekend for the sale - that means waiting for warmer, sunnier weather. These are weeks that the home could have been on the market.

Ads are a lose-lose for you. If the garage sale is successful, then the seller might conclude that s/he can just put an ad in the paper and sell the home!

If the garage sale isn't successful, then the seller has done all that pricing, agonizing over sentimental stuff, and organizing simply to face doing it all again.

Ads are expensive, compared to the 'take.' What does an ad in the local paper cost? How long does it run? If all the junk doesn't sell, it has to be packed up again and put back in the house or the garage. Then it has to be advertised all over again.

The worst part is that an ad might contribute to cutting you out of the deal. What better way to signal that you might be selling a home than with a garage sale ad or flier? Buyers who are looking for homes to buy might stop by the sale. If your seller isn't under contract, any buyer could make an offer for the home and your seller could sell the home without you.

Just like buyers, there are plenty of other Realtors who read ads and scour telephone poles looking for garage sale sellers. If you don't have your seller under contract yet, and are waiting for the home to get in selling condition, you are risking that your seller will meet another agent who could romance the seller away from you - at the very garage sale you suggested.

The truth is most clutter has little value. That's why nobody expects to make much or pay much for items in a garage sale.

When you examine the time, effort and money it takes to have a garage sale, to net only pennies on the dollar, it is simply more profitable and humane to give away or to donate unwanted items. If something isn't fit to donate, then it's appropriate to throw it away.

If your seller is worried about how much they are losing, remind them that charitable deductions will net them far more than nickels and quarters at a garage sale.

Get your sellers organized by having them store items in boxes marked "keep," "donate," or "trash." "Keep" boxes should be marked with the destination where it will be moved, such as "Master bedroom," "Pantry," or "Attic."

With this philosophy, your seller disposes of items once and for all, quickly and easily. Clutter is now boxed - ready to be moved, or moved out, and you've got a clutter-free home to market.