This article is about how curbside finds for flipping furniture and home decor will make you more money.

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We get asked regularly how we make money from curbside finds for flipping furniture: “You’re picking up furniture off the street and reselling it?” But of course, we also get great deals at estate sales, shop garage sales and hit the thrift stores. But as we say again and again, everything we do to grow our flipping furniture business is strategic. So even our curbside picking is organized and purposeful.

Since you’re reading this I’ll assume you are now professional pickers, like us. You’re a certified flipper who regularly buy, finds, dives and brakes for abandoned chairs and nightstands and lamps. Welcome! Seriously, this is who we are. We took our business from nothing to five figures in just 12 months. We can’t guarantee your results but we would bet that you can definitely start to see real income fast—if you have a strategy.

You need your curbside picking or dumpster diving to be strategic. Or you’re going to need a lot more space.

When we first started picking we didn’t know what we were doing. So we just took everything that wasn’t disgusting or completely falling apart. Cheap lamps, single wooden chairs with a spindle missing, kid’s toys: if it had any potential (meaning we weren’t afraid it had something contagious on it), we took it. As we wrote before, when you’re starting a furniture flipping business from nothing, you have to get scrappy. But if you do this long term, you’ll pretty quickly begin to run out of space—and energy. We believe that the key to growing your furniture flipping business to thousands of dollars is to do things you can scale.

Why you need a strategy when you pick curbside finds for flipping furniture

Luckily we learned over time that certain things sold well. But we also took note from what wasn’t selling. And we started to save ourselves a lot of time by not wasting time grabbing something that didn’t sell, or only sold for $10 after sitting around taking up space for months, or never sold and we just donated. To grow your furniture flipping business you have to start doing things that you can scale.

This means that even your dumpster diving and curbside picking has to be approached with a business mindset. We go picking two to three times per week, for about two hours each time. That’s as much as six hours per week, plus gas. But we would rather pass up things that don’t sell well and come home empty-handed after an hour than to load up the car with stuff that has to be hauled out, cleaned up, staged and priced—only to take up storage room for months.

If you’re ready to work hard and learn constantly as you go, two things are bound to happen. One, you will not begin to work smarter instead of harder. Two, you will begin to get smarter faster. Don’t beat yourself up when something goes wrong, just retrace your steps, and commit to avoiding that risk in the future. And if something goes well, don’t just sit back and applaud yourself, figure out why it went so well and plan to replicate it. (Actually, you should DEFINITELY applaud yourself first. But then take notes.) Ok, that’s our two cents on that. Now, for stuff that’s costs even less.

Here Are Five Curbside Finds for Flipping Furniture That You Shouldn’t Pass Up:

Second, plant people are very enthusiastic (VERY, like, only second to gamers) about gardening items and you may find that they will pay in advance for porch pick up. Or, they’ll come over right away before another plant person grabs it! Seriously, pick up planters. It’s fast money, and plant people are good people and even better customers. Planters technically aren’t curbside finds for flipping furniture, but we find that home decor is the perfect complement. Plus, people buy a lot more planters than nightstands so we get repeat customers this way.

1. Pick up bad lamps: if they have good hardware.

Pairs of lamps tend to be readily available for cheap at thrift stores and garage sales. But they often are missing their shades, the harps (the metal arms that attach the shade to the lamp) or the finial (the little decorative top of the lamp that screws down onto the harp). If you happen to see a lamp on the street, even if it looks beyond saving, check the shade, the finial and the harp. You can keep a parts box of these kinds of things, especially if you’ve been flipping for a while. While you can buy parts like this on Amazon, any parts adds to your base price. Which brings us to…

2. Furniture with good legs, pulls, or hinges are great curbside finds for flipping furniture

We have picked up waterlogged furniture with decent pulls. Knobs seem affordable: until you are replacing six knobs on two nightstands. Suddenly a free nightstand is $20 in knobs. Related, we also save legs of tables, especially if they are hairpin legs. And we save tops made of any stone (granite, marble) or glass. You can mount this on an upcycled item as a base.

We also sometimes save pieces of furniture, especially if it’s good vintage wood. We saved parts of a beautiful but broken walnut artist’s desk from the 70s. The individual sides are large enough to mount onto legs (maybe those hairpin legs you picked up), and you’ve got a coffee table, or maybe two small accent tables (if you have a saw and skill).

3. Storage bins: for the business, but not to sell

If they are reasonably clean, we will pick up storage bins, preferably with lids. These are not to resell, just a practical reality of this kind of business. You will soon need storage, and if you’re just starting out free storage is your friend. There’s not too much more to that one, but we see them a lot, and most people would probably pass them up.

4. Planters and garden décor: because plant people love them and we love plant people

Plant people are their own special crowd, and if you find good, quality planters you will probably find enthusiastic buyers. Ceramic and terra cotta are best, wooden and metal ones next, leave the plastic. There are two great things about collecting outdoor planters and garden décor. First, because they are going to be stuck in dirt or filled with it, most plant people don’t mind if these items are a bit dirty or scratched up.

5. Seasonal outdoor décor: the bigger, the better.

A couple good things about seasonal décor. First, some of it is pretty large, so people can’t fit it in the garbage can. It’s easy to spot. Also, people often discard seasonal décor simply because they have tired of it. You can only use so many wreaths! Or pumpkins. Often you will get perfectly good décor that is simply out of style or excess because the homeowner wanted to update it.

At the same time, for many people seasonal décor is a luxury and so the demand for secondhand seasonal décor (if high quality) is in demand. We once had a pair of two baby turkeys (garden décor) and the listing on Facebook received about 200 views in 48 hours. The eventual buyer drove 90 minutes round trip to come and get them. On top of that, because it’s outdoor décor, people accept that it’s going to be a little bit weathered. You get less pushback that it’s not in mint condition. (Honestly, we’re sometimes a little surprised how much people want pre-owned items to be in great condition, but that’s another story.)

People love outdoor seasonal decor. If you can store it, grab it.

Anyway, people love outdoor seasonal décor. Generally, the bigger the item the more valuable. Unless, it’s something like our turkeys which really could be garden décor year round. In other words, if you found like a little elf that was made of stone, that can do double duty as a gnome. But generally, if it’s very holiday specific then bigger is better because the big stuff tends to cost more. For Christmas: think oversized snowmen, lighted reindeer, full size Santas.

However, we are noticing more and more other holidays that people are committing serious yard décor investments in. And holidays that are non-religious like Halloween and 4^th of July means that literally everyone is a potential buyer. These are decor, not curbside finds for flipping furniture but we love that it requires essentially no work to flip these items at a decent profit. The only downside is you will probably find them right after the holiday, so you might have to hold them until the next year.

Bonus tip: always grab a box that says “Free.”

When ever we see a big sofa or table that we can’t carry, we still drive by slowly. People often clean out a room, and on the ground next to the oversized item are smaller items. Some of the best curbside finds for furniture flipping have been not only the furniture but the boxes of stuff that are marked free. We even got one that said “Free. And everything works.” Take it–we’ve never had a box like that disappoint. It’s always been in “nicer” neighborhoods and our theory is that people don’t really want these things go into the landfill. They’re hoping someone will pick it up. They don’t want to waste our time worrying it’s a bunch of stuff that doesn’t work. That’s nice, right? Ok, moving on…

Three things to leave behind and save space for better curbside finds for flipping furniture.

Here’s stuff you want to grab but shouldn’t, probably. The truth is we grabbed everything at the beginning. And that’s ok, because if you know nothing, it’s the best way to learn. But you want to get smarter (time is money, and if you’re picking up duds that’s wasted time). Also, you’re gonna run out of space! So here’s things we suggest you let go:

Single chairs: we love them, but leave them.

Ok, we struggle to stop ourselves on this one because we sort of just love cool, interesting chairs. But with a few exceptions, a single chair is usually not worth it. Rocking chairs are an exception, so are true midcentury modern desk chairs, or chairs made of solid walnut or similar. But the sorta cool chair that just needs to be sanded and painted and upholstered and… No, leave it. The time spent doing all that is unlikely to be worth it. Unless you are great at making cool, funky one-off chairs. If this your specialty, by all means go for it. But if you’re a bit more of a generalist, I’d say pass it up.

Bonus tip: if you are going to upcycle individual chairs into something else, then definitely go for it. There are more articles than people so many good ideas on doing this! We love this upcycled chair dog bed idea!

Most fabric and upholstered items are just not worth the time. Or the grime.

Very occasionally we will break this rule if the chairs (that’s chairs plural, see above, no single chairs!) have a wood frame with an upholstered seat. And if we know we can easily re-upholster the seat, then we’ll consider them. But usually, upholstered items are hard to clean. Even if they came right out of the house, people have pets, children, snacking habits, whatever, and it ends up in the fabric and deep in the crevices. There are exceptions, but generally we don’t slow down for sofas, overstuffed armchairs, etc. Note: fabric doesn’t include leather or faux leather, however, which are easiest to clean.

Heavy appliances are just too much for us. But, read on.

This is just our take, but there is a very specific strategy for picking up dishwashers, refrigerators, but honestly even vacuum cleaners or lawn mowers. If you are handy, have access to a large storage space, or want scrap metal, these could be great money. However, it takes longer to load and unload these items. Also, unlike a broken chair, you have no way of knowing when you look at appliance if they work (a broken dryer looks just like a working one).

But even if you get past all that on the acquisition side, what about the sell side? Your customer base is limited because you won’t get repeat buyers (people usually only need one fridge). Nor can you sell adjacent items (just because I need a microwave doesn’t mean I’ll also need a vacuum cleaner). But you can sell, say, an end table, and a lamp to go on it. But to be clear people do make money picking up these items. We see them all the time and wish them the best, because we’re picking too. We just pull around that truck full of dishwashers because. . .  Is that a pair of chairs over there?

The best curbside finds for flipping furniture and home decor is really down to what sells well for you: quickly, for a great profit, or both.

The bottom line is you want to maximize your learnings, in both directions. If something sells well for you, you generally want to double down and do that better and faster. And if something turns out to not be very profitable, you want to learn to do that as little as possible. When it comes to picking up curbside finds for furniture flipping the analysis is the same. But because these items are free, it’s harder to know when you’re just picking up too much. Our other ways of finding free things for flipping require less self-control! Hopefully these tips on what items are not great for curbside picking will help you figure out your own strategy.

This article is about how curbside finds for flipping furniture and home decor will make you more money.