Published Oct 2025 · City Wide Finds

The traditional way of finding garage sales (and why it’s harder than it needs to be)

Garage sales are still one of the most fun weekend hunts — whether you’re flipping, picking, or just stocking up on kids’ clothes. But the way most people still discover them hasn’t changed in decades: you spot a sign, you scroll a random group, you flip through classifieds, and then you drive around hoping the address is right and it’s actually open.

1. How people usually find garage sales

Most cities and suburbs still rely on a patchwork of sources to promote garage sales:

• Yard signs at intersections or in front of the house.
• Neighborhood Facebook groups with posts that get buried by the weekend.
• Community or church bulletins that list “multi-family sale” dates without details.
• Local classifieds / marketplace posts that don’t tell you what’s near what.
• Pure drive-around mode: get in the car, follow arrows, make it up as you go.

None of these are bad — they’re just not connected. If you want to hit all the sales in your area, you have to hop between three or four of these sources and still guess on the route.

2. What’s wrong with that approach

When we started planning City Wide Finds, we wrote down every pain point we heard from people who really like doing garage sales. It came down to this:

Stuff is scattered

One sale is in the Facebook group, two are on a marketplace app, three are on paper signs, and the neighborhood association emailed a PDF map yesterday. You never get a single view of everything happening that day.

Timing is unclear

A lot of sales say “Saturday 9-3” but people start setting up at 8:15 or they shut down at noon if they’re sold out. If you’re planning your morning, that uncertainty matters.

Routing is manual

Even if you collect 8 addresses, you still have to type them into Maps one at a time and figure out the best order. That’s extra friction when you should be driving.

Multi-day sales are hard to spot

Some sales are Friday only, some are Saturday, some are “Fri + Sat but not Sunday.” Without a tool that normalizes that, you waste time driving to sales that aren’t open.

Organizers can’t reach everyone

If you’re running a big church, block, or HOA sale, you want buyers from the entire city — not just the members of your group. But right now you’re limited to whatever channels you personally post in.

3. What City Wide Finds is changing

City Wide Finds is built around a simple idea: see every sale in your city for a given day/weekend on one map. Once you can see everything, the other parts — filtering, routing, submitting — become way easier.

Here’s how we’re approaching it:

• One map, not ten feeds. Instead of bouncing around social posts, you open City Wide Finds and see what’s happening city-wide.
• Built-in time filtering. See what’s open now, opening soon, or this weekend.
• Route-friendly. Pick the sales you actually want to hit and get an order to drive them.
• Submit pages for organizers. If you’re hosting a big sale, you can push it into the same place everyone’s already looking.

4. What this means for shoppers and organizers

For shoppers / pickers / resellers

• More stops in less time because you’re not guessing on addresses.
• Fewer dead drives because you can see if a sale is actually scheduled for today.
• Better planning with friends — send them the map or list, not 5 screenshots.

For organizers

• Wider reach than a single Facebook group.
• Structured info (date, time, address, notes) so people know what to expect.
• Coordination for “city-wide” events — everyone’s sale is discoverable in the same place.

5. What’s coming next

We’re launching with the core: city-wide view + routing mindset. After that, the obvious additions are organizer tools, saved routes, maybe even weekend-specific collections (“All Saturday-only sales in Elmhurst,” “All HOA sales in May,” etc.).

If that sounds useful for your town, hop on the list so you know when we open it up.